Great Throughts Treasury

"The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts."

"I see harm reduction as a way of engaging people as part of that path to recovery."

"Few problems are less recognized, but more important than, the accelerating disappearance of the earth's biological resources. In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it is perched. "

"In order to pursue chemotherapy successfully we must look for substances which possess a high affinity and high lethal potency in relation to the parasites, but have a low toxicity in relation to the body, so that it becomes possible to kill the parasites without damaging the body to any great extent. We want to hit the parasites as selectively as possible. In other words, we must learn to aim and to aim in a chemical sense. The way to do this is to synthesize by chemical means as many derivatives as possible of relevant substances. "

"One of the key factors contributing to this country's rising asthma epidemic is that patients are not equipped to recognize and manage their triggers and symptoms. As a result, patients don't effectively communicate with their doctors and end up comprising basic daily activities."

"The organism possesses certain contrivances by means of which the immunity reaction, so easily produced by all kinds of cells, is prevented from acting against the organism's own elements and so giving rise to auto toxins ... so that one might be justified in speaking of a 'horror autotoxicus' of the organism. These contrivances are naturally of the highest importance for the existence of the individual. "

"To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer."

"We may regard the cell quite apart from its familiar morphological aspects, and contemplate its constitution from the purely chemical standpoint. We are obliged to adopt the view that the protoplasm is equipped with certain atomic groups, whose function especially consists in fixing to themselves food-stuffs, of importance to the cell-life. Adopting the nomenclature of organic chemistry, these groups may be designated side-chains. We may assume that the protoplasm consists of a special executive center (Leistungs-centrum) in connection with which are nutritive side-chains."

"Actually, the problem in the world is that there are too many rich people."

"Overdrafts on aquifers are one reason some of our geologist colleagues are convinced that water shortages will bring the human population explosion to a halt. There are substitutes for oil; there is no substitute for fresh water."

"A series of things have come up since then that have made the problem incredibly grimmer…. The ozone hole… acid rain… Three hundred million people have starved to death since THE POPULATION BOMB was written. The famines weren’t as large as agriculturists thought they would be… due to the spread of… Green Revolution technology into the poor countries…. What makes us nervous right now is that we’re faced with again having to do something desperate to increase our food production greatly... In 1965 we knew exactly how to do it, the question was could we deploy it fast enough—Today we have nothing left to deploy—that’s very scary... As a species we’re not able to live on our income; we’re living on our capital, our deep rich agricultural soils are being destroyed, water is being over-pumped, and our biodiversity, our life support system—we’re already far beyond what we can support."

"Trying to separate the contributions of nature and nuture to an attribute is rather like trying to separate the contributions of length and width to the area of a rectangle, which at first glance also seems easy. When you think about it carefully, though, it proves impossible."

"The idea that we can just keep growing forever on a finite planet is totally imbecilic... Julian Simon, a professor of junkmail marketing, and his kind, think technology will solve everything... We can use up the Earth then we can just jump into spaceships and fly somewhere else... Technology does nothing to solve problems of biodiversity or living space or arable cropland... Fresh water and arable cropland are finite resources... We are already far beyond what we can support sustainably... The provincial view you get from someone living in some wealthy American East Coast city is wildly different from reality. Most of the world is tropical, hungry and poor. Visit the developing world and southern hemisphere and you get a very different view of reality."

"The key to understanding overpopulation is not population density but the numbers of people in an area relative to its resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities; that is, to the area’s carrying capacity. When is an area overpopulated? When its population can’t be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources.... By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated."

"Solving the population problem is not going to solve the problems of racism… of sexism… of religious intolerance… of war… of gross economic inequality—But if you don’t solve the population problem, you’re not going to solve any of those problems. Whatever problem you’re interested in, you’re not going to solve it unless you also solve the population problem. Whatever your cause, it’s a lost cause without population control."

"The mother of the year should be a sterilized woman with two adopted children."

"It has been shown to be possible, by deliberately planned and chemotherapeutic approach, to discover curative agents which act specifically and aetiologically against diseases due to protozoal infections, and especially against the spirilloses, and amongst these against syphilis in the first place. Further evidence for the specificity of the action of dihydroxydiaminoarsenobenzene [Salvarsan '606'] is the disappearance of the Wasserman reaction, which reaction must ... be regarded as indicative of a reaction of the organism to the constituents of the spirochaetes. "

"We're one of the most highly regulated industries, and we have to pay attention to what government is doing."

"The system as a whole is too restrictive and as a result, many errors of law can arise out of such a flawed and complicated process."

"The National Academy of Sciences would be unable to give a unanimous decision if asked whether the sun would rise tomorrow."

"The history of the knowledge of the phenomena of life and of the organized world can be divided into two main periods. For a long time anatomy, and particularly the anatomy of the human body, was the a and ? of scientific knowledge. Further progress only became possible with the discovery of the microscope. A long time had yet to pass until through Schwann the cell was established as the final biological unit. It would mean bringing coals to Newcastle were I to describe here the immeasurable progress which biology in all its branches owes to the introduction of this concept of the cell. For this concept is the axis around which the whole of the modem science of life revolves. "

"The appeal process is a waste of time. Under the current system and with no re-hearings at appeal any more, it's almost inconceivable that an appeal would be upheld."