Great Throughts Treasury

"Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons bring ruin to all."

"Beyond the limits of his confining skin, no man can own any thing. “Property” refers not to things owned but to the rights granted by society; they must periodically be re-examined in the light of social justice."

"A community that renounces war as a means of settling international disputes still cannot survive without that discriminating form of altruism we call patriotism. It must defend the integrity of its borders or succumb into chaos."

"A culture of poverty is one in which the future is discounted - both implicitly and explicitly - at a very high rate."

"All persuasion takes place through coercion."

"An effective gatekeeper of the mind does not call attention to itself. It actuates a psychological mechanism called a taboo."

"A comprehensive history of great business fortunes would show a disconcertingly large number that were made [where...] the enterpriser devised a silent way to commonize costs while continuing to privatize the profits."

"A managed commons, though it may have other defects, is not automatically subject to the tragic fate of the unmanaged commons."

"A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero."

"And remember the competitive exclusion principle: if fertility varies in a population that is offered options in fertility, then as generations succeed one another, the pronatalist elements in the population will, in time, displace the ones who conscientiously limit their fertility."

"Affirmative action implies that if we cannot guarantee equality, then we should legislate equity."

"Apparently it is easier for the media to photograph scenes that suggest the suffering of new immigrants than it is to prove, photographically, that widely dispersed job losses have a common cause."

"Birth control does not equal population control."

"Broadly stated, most ecological problems reduce to a single problem of balancing supply and demand."

"But does God give a prize for the maximum number of people? Such a God cannot be the Einstein's God."

"Calling a ubiquitous problem a 'world problem' is useful only if there is a plausible worldwide solution."

"Continuity is at the heart of conservatism; ecology serves that heart."

"Concern for the environment cannot be separated from the problems of altruism."

"Controlled immigration becomes the default position of population policy. A heavy burden of proof falls on anyone who proposes doing away with border control."

"Dipping into the great bulk of economic analysis, you soon discover that environment is usually no more than a ghost in the woodwork."

"Earthly language serves two contradictory purposes: to facilitate thought and to prevent it."

"Every proposal to build a dam, to widen a highway, to cut down another forest, to turn wetlands into salable real estate, or to bury unwanted waste products is sure to have unintended consequences."

"Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species."

"Equity is determinable by law and custom; equality is determined by nature."

"Every 'shortage' of supply is equally a 'longage' of demand."

"Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."

"From now on, we must accept responsibility for all unintended consequences while doing our best to predict them in advance."

"Exponential growth is kept under control by misery."

"Extremism appears to lead to clear-cut decisions, whereas moderation embarrasses us by emphasizing problems that are yet to be solved."

"If He [God] is concerned at all with our well-being, it is hard for a thinking human being to believe that He would work only in the light."

"If the world is one great commons, in which all food is shared equally, then we are lost. Those who breed faster will replace the rest. Sharing the food from national territories is operationally equivalent to sharing territory; in both cases a commons is established, and tragedy is the ultimate result."

"If we are to correct the consequences of the world's actions, we must understand the machinery that accounts for these consequences."

"God's primary gift was the process of natural selection, which, given enough time, could - and did, and still does - put together the incredibly complex and beautiful world we live in."

"Having accepted disease control, the people [of poor countries] must now accept population control."

"Immigrant labor pauperizes domestic labor."

"In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable."

"If we were honest with ourselves we would see that our attitude toward immigration reveals the hypocrisy in our praise of the economic dogma of 'the market'."

"In a less than perfect world, the allocation of rights based on territory must be defended if a ruinous breeding race is to be avoided."

"In a world of limits prosperity can be maintained only if population is contained."

"In our heavily populated world, nothing less than true 'spaceship economics' - ecological economics - will suffice to make life livable for us, for our children, and for our children's children."

"Intuitively, it should be obvious that the ability to escape society's punishment is directly related to the density of the community's population."

"In sharp contrast to privatism, commonism privatizes the gain but commonizes the losses."

"It cannot be too often repeated that an extravagantly multicultural nation is poorly positioned to compete with nations that have not succumbed to the siren call for more 'diversity'."

"It is clear that we will greatly increase human misery if we do not, during the immediate future, assume that the world available to the terrestrial human population is finite."

"It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience."

"It is not too much to say that for the United States, with the low fertility of its resident citizens, the population problem has now become an immigration problem."

"It takes five years for a willing person's mind to change. Have patience with yourself and others when treading in an area protected by a taboo."

"Knowledge alone will not move nations: astonishing and unforeseen events will be required for humanity's education."

"Logic would have it that if we fail to bring about a benign transition to zero population growth by conscious human intervention, nature may, of its own accord, bring about a malignant transition by increasing the death rate to meet the birth rate."

"Low standards of living drive out high standards."