126 Species Extinction Quotes
Following is our list of species extinction quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about extinction.
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Famous Species Extinction Quotes
Extinction is the rule, survival is the exception. — Carl Sagan
In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it perches. — Paul R. Ehrlich
The extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth - social and environmental. — Ingrid Newkirk
Often extinctions in the ocean occur at the same time as those on land. Then again, the ice age extinctions lost many big animals, but not many sea faring ones. — Robert T. Bakker
Wildlife of the world is disappearing, not because of a malicious and deliberate policy of slaughter and extermination, but simply because of a general and widespread ignorance and neglect. — Prince Philip
Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book, written in a language humans hardly know how to read, about the place where they live. — Holmes Rolston III
If man doesn't learn to treat the oceans and the rain forest with respect, man will become extinct. — Peter Benchley
All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization. — Gerald Durrell
I might be an endangered species. — Waylon Jennings
All the rhinos are dead, for the most part. I think that's really sad. — Vince Staples
People forget the good that zoos do. If it weren't for zoos, we would have so many species that would be extinct today. — Betty White
Biodiversity is the greatest treasure we have... Its diminishment is to be prevented at all cost. — Thomas Eisner
Languages are dying at an unprecedented rate. A language dies every 14 days. — Patricia Ryan
We all have a responsibility to protect endangered species, both for their sake and for the sake of our own future generations. — Loretta Lynch
A widespread taste for pornography means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction. — J. G. Ballard
Short Species Extinction Quotes
- A great silence is spreading over the natural world even as the sound of man is becoming deafening. — Bernie Krause
- If you want to see an endangered species, get up and look in the mirror. — John Young
- It's coexistence or no existence. — Bertrand Russell
- The continued existence of wildlife and wilderness is important to the quality of life of humans. — Jim Fowler
- The scary thing is that in my lifetime, 95 per cent of the world's rhinos have been killed. — Mark Carwardine
- If honey bees become extinct, human society will follow in four years. — Ernest A. Fortin
Animal Extinction Quotes
In ten years [i.e., 1980] all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. — Paul R. Ehrlich
Most people know that forests are the lungs of our planet, literally playing a critical role in every breath we take. And that they're also home to incredible animals like the orangutan and elephant, which will go extinct if we keep cutting down their forests. — Chris Noth
We have no ethical obligation to preserve the different breeds of livestock produced through selective breeding One generation and out. We have no problems with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding. — Wayne Pacelle
Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct. — Gaylord Nelson
It is a fact that the ecological devastation of the planet can be traced to the consumption of meat and dairy, which contributes to water, soil, and air pollution as well as global warming and the mass extinction of many species of plant and animal forms. — Sharon Gannon
We have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals. — Wayne Pacelle
It's like the animal kingdom. Adapt or go extinct. — Brett Hull
Well lose more species of plants and animals between 2000 and 2065 than weve lost in the last 65 million years. If we dont find answers to these problems, were gonna be victims of this extinction event that were at fault for. — Paul Watson
I laughed when Steven Spielberg said that cloning extinct animals was inevitable. But I'm not laughing anymore, at least about mammoths. This is going to happen. It's just a matter of working out the details. — Hendrik Poinar
You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals should be left extinct. — Michael Crichton
Extinction Quotes
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. — Ronald Reagan
Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. ... Everything science has taught me-and continues to teach me-strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. Nothing disappears without a trace. — Wernher Von Braun
Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again. — Ronald Reagan
I'm quite mad by nature, and it's my craziness that has saved me from extinction. — Marco Pantani
We torture and kill two billion sentient living beings every week. 10,000 entire species are wiped out every year because of the actions of one, and we are now facing the sixth mass extinction in cosmological history. If any other organism did this, a biologist would consider them a virus. — Philip Wollen
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. — Woody Allen
The Celts were fearless warriors because they wish to inculcate this as one of their leading tenets, that souls do not become extinct, but pass after death from one body to another. — Julius Caesar
The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. — Winston Churchill
The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue. — Arnold J. Toynbee
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. — Robert Maynard Hutchins
Extinct Quotes
As long as hierarchy persists, as long as domination organises humanity around a system of elites, the project of dominating nature will continue to exist and inevitably lead our planet to ecological extinction. — Murray Bookchin
An asteroid ten km in diameter, slightly smaller than SF, made the most dominant species extinct. Our asteroid defense systems need to grow exponentially if humanity hopes to survive. — Peter Diamandis
Even though we may all become extinct, we can still leave our footprint in the sand. — Dr. Seuss
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. — Ronald Reagan
I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours. — John F. Kennedy
Salamander: Originally a reptile inhabiting fire; later, an anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile. Salamanders are now believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account having been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it with a bucket of holy water. — Ambrose Bierce
The thing that fascinates me is that the way I came to film and television is extinct. Then there were gatekeepers, it was prohibitively expensive to make a film, to be a director you had to be an entrepreneur to raise money. — Tom Hooper
People shop and learn in a whole new way compared to just a few years ago, so marketers need to adapt or risk extinction. — Brian Halligan
If raising children was less rewarding than not doing it, the human race would have gone extinct. — Naval Ravikant
Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction. — Jean Dubuffet
Mass Extinction Quotes
There is one living organism, called a tardigrade, that has survived the five great mass extinctions on Earth, and it can survive in vacuums in space and boiling hot water and freezing subzero temperatures. — Alycia Debnam Carey
If we don't cut carbon's money pipeline, we will pay for their gasoline with floods, droughts, fires, super storms, drowned cities, mass extinctions, wars, and collapsing civilizations. — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
No matter what we call it, poison is still poison, death is still death, and industrial civilization is still causing the greatest mass extinction in the history of the planet. — Derrick Jensen
The extinctions ongoing worldwide promise to be at least as great as the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the age of dinosaurs. — E. O. Wilson
If I had to predict, the way things are going, I'd say the chances are about 50-50 that humanity will be extinct or nearly extinct within 50 years. Weapons of mass destruction, disease, I mean this global warming is scaring the living daylights out of me. — Ted Turner
For wisest ends this universal Power Gave appetites, from whose quick impulse life Subsists, by which we only live, all life Insipid else, unactive, unenjoy'd. Hence to this peopled earth, which, that extinct, That flame for propagation, soon would roll A lifeless mass, and vainly cumber heaven. — John Armstrong
Our planet is currently undergoing a mass extinction of species called the Anthropocene - the Age of Man. — Louie Psihoyos
If we are to save humanity and the planet from the worst mass extinction of all time, worse even than that at the end of the Permian, we must stop at two degrees. — Mark Lynas
Mass extinctions may not threaten distant futures, but they are decidedly unpleasant for species caught up in the throes of their power. — Stephen Jay Gould
I would want us to start our quest to survive mass extinction by rethinking how we build cities. Cities should be commonplaces of production, rather than consumption - they should be producing food, and fuel. — Annalee Newitz
Endangered Species Quotes
You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. — Terence McKenna
The snow leopard is absolutely magnificent. It represents really what endangered species are all about. — Jack Hanna
Well, I think breathing life into the Endangered Species Act, taking those wolves back into Yellowstone, restoring the salmon in the rivers of the Pacific Northwest. — Bruce Babbitt
The children and nature movement is fueled by this fundamental idea: the child in nature is an endangered species, and the health of children and the health of the Earth are inseparable. — Richard Louv
Life is a fight, but not everyone’s a fighter. Otherwise, bullies would be an endangered species. — Andrew Vachss
What is a fish without a river? What is a bird without a tree to nest in? What is an Endangered Species Act without any enforcement mechanism to ensure their habitat is protected? It is nothing. — Jay Inslee
Tibet has a very proud people but it's culturally gone and overrun ever since the Chinese took over. It's like saving the rhino. When a species is endangered, it's gone. — Paul Theroux
We are not an endangered species ourselves yet, but this is not for lack of trying. — Douglas Adams
Animals are, like us, endangered species on an endangered planet, and we are the ones who are endangering them, it, and ourselves. They are innocent sufferers in a hell of our making. — Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
The Endangered Species Act is the strongest and most effective tool we have to repair the environmental harm that is causing a species to decline. — Norm Dicks
Extinct Animals Quotes
I think we must ask ourselves if this is really what we want to do to God's creation, to drive it to extinction? Because extinction really is irreversible; species that go extinct are lost forever. This is not like Jurassic Park. We can't bring them back. — Stuart L. Pimm
Ninety-nine percent of all species that ever lived are now extinct. — E. O. Wilson
What I really wanted was to travel and see all the different animals that were on the verge of extinction. — Leonardo DiCaprio
We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction. — Stephen Jay Gould
Let's not be too quick to blame the human race for everything. A great many species of animals became extinct before man ever appeared on earth. — Will Cuppy
An animal that is very abundant, before it gets extinct it becomes rare. So you don't lose abundant animals. You always lose rare animals. Therefore, they're not perceived as a big loss. — Daniel Pauly
Shelters, conservationists, those concerned about unnecessary cruelty toward the animals we eat, and people working against species extinction fight to preserve the true riches of our planet, our real inheritance. These are big, critical goals. — April Gornik
It's hard not to be kind of pessimistic about human beings generally, because we do tend to mess things up. If you just look at the history of extinctions, we've killed off an awful lot of animals - and I don't think we're doing a very good job of looking after the planet. — Bill Bryson
One of the laws of paleontology is that an animal which must protect itself with thick armour is degenerate. It is usually a sign that the species is on the road to extinction. — John Steinbeck
The human race could go extinct and I for one would not shed any tears. — David Foreman
People Writing About Species Extinction
More Species Extinction Quotes
What is your personal carrying capacity for grief, rage, despair? We are living in a period of mass extinction. The numbers stand at 200 species a day. That's 73,000 a year. This culture is oblivious to their passing, feels entitled to their every last niche, and there is no roll call on the nightly news. — Lierre Keith
No magic bullet, not even the Internet, can save us from population explosion, deforestation, climate disruption, poison by pollution, and wholesale extinction of plant and animal species. We are going to have to want different things, seek different pleasures, pursue different goals than those that have been driving us and our global economy. — Joanna Macy
Cheetah genes cooperate with cheetah genes but not with camel genes, and vice versa. This is not because cheetah genes, even in the most poetic sense, see any virtue in the preservation of the cheetah species. They are not working to save the cheetah from extinction like some molecular World Wildlife Fund. — Richard Dawkins
Overpopulation in the United States will become THE single greatest issue facing Americans in the 21st century. We either solve it proactively or nature will solve it brutally for us via water shortages, energy crisis, air pollution, gridlock, species extinction and worse. — Frosty Wooldridge
Species go extinct because there are historical contraints built into a given body or a given design. — Kevin Kelly
The damage that climate change is causing and that will get worse if we fail to act goes beyond the hundreds of thousands of lives, homes and businesses lost, ecosystems destroyed, species driven to extinction, infrastructure smashed and people inconvenienced. — David Suzuki
If in your lifetime you watch a species go extinct, or plummet almost to the point of extinction, that is a sign that something really serious is going on. — Elizabeth Kolbert
One must believe that every living thing whatsoever must change insensibly in its organization and in its form... One must therefore never expect to find among living species all those which are found in the fossil state, and yet one may not assume that any species has really been lost or rendered extinct. — Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
I think it inevitably follows, that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement will naturally suffer most. — Charles Darwin
Certainly paleontologists have found samples of an extremely small fraction, only, of the earth's extinct species, and even for groups that are most readily preserved and found as fossils they can never expect to find more than a fraction. — George G. Simpson
In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction. — David Mitchell
One animal or plant species may become extinct every hour. All species are doomed to extinction, but man through worldwide development/killing animals for food/profit/using toxic chemicals such as pesticides/industrial wastes, will accelerate the extinction of plants/animals and the result will be a more hostile environment for man. — Erik P. Eckholm
... why are so many religious people arguing about the origin of the species but so few concerned about the extinction of the species? — Brian D. McLaren
If enough species are extinguished, will the ecosystems collapse, and will the extinction of most other species follow soon afterward? The only answer anyone can give is: possibly. By the time we find out, however, it might be too late. One planet, one experiment. — Sayings
Nevertheless so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life! — Charles Darwin
Amidst the vicissitudes of the earth's surface, species cannot be immortal, but must perish, one after another, like the individuals which compose them. There is no possibility of escaping from this conclusion. — Charles Lyell
I was reading about how countless species are being pushed toward extinction by man's destruction of forests. . . . Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. — Bill Watterson
The eyes of that species of extinct giant, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara as our eyes do now. — Abraham Lincoln
I accept extinction as best explaining disjoined species. I see that the same cause must have reduced many species of great range to small, and that it may have reduced large genera to so small, and of families. — Asa Gray
I think when you work on fossils, and you realize that a species is there, and it's abundant for quite a long period of time, and then at some point it's no longer there - and so, when you look at that bigger picture, yes, you realize that either you change and adapt, or, as a species, you go extinct. — Louise Leakey
I've accepted the fact that there's a beginning and end to everything. All species are born, evolve, and then die off. We're going through the 6th great extinction and the large mammals are going first and, you know what - we're large mammals! — Yvon Chouinard
This is the moment when we have to decide: does a world exist outside ourselves and is that world worth fighting for? Another 200 species went extinct today. They were my kin. They were yours, too. If we know them as such, why aren't we fighting to save them with everything we've got? — Lierre Keith
A species may eat a particular bacterium, phytoplankton, smaller fish, or plant in an area. Lacking a predator, these species/populations will overgrow and alter the area's biology, overwhelming and driving to extinction dozens or hundreds or thousands of other local species. — Thom Hartmann
One in eight plant species face extinction. — David Attenborough
An average of seventy-four species become extinct every day, which was one good reason but not the only one to hold someone's hand. — Nicole Krauss
The technical definition of the Holocene has to do with the extinction of a snail species in Sicily. — Kenneth Lacovara
Our biggest challenges for the ocean and for the planet are problems of perception. People need to understand that species extinctions, habitat destruction, ocean acidification, and pollution are all chipping away at the resilience of the thin layer of life that sustains us on Spaceship Earth. — Edith Widder
All geologic history is full of the beginning and the ends of species-of their first and last days; but it exhibits no genealogies of development. — Hugh Miller
Globally sharks have been killed for their fins, for their cartilage, for their livers, for their meat. But mostly what has driven some species of sharks to near extinction - including the hammerhead shark - is the new luxury taste for shark fin soup. — Sylvia Earle
The extinction rate is so huge now, we're to the stage where we've got to set up recombinant ecologies. There are no longer enough species left, anywhere, to hold the system together. — Bill Mollison
On an overcrowded planet where more species slip toward extinction every day, should one species have the right to multiply and consume at will, even as it nudges others to oblivion? — Thomas French
Something bad happened on both Mars with its dried-up watercourses and Venus with its runaway greenhouse effect. Could something bad happen on Earth too? Our species currently turns row upon row of environmental knobs, without much regard to long-term consequences. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
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