Population Quotes

“Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“There are too many of us, he thought. There are billions of us and that's too many. Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you. Strangers come and cut your heart out. Strangers come and take your blood. Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life!”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“‎Using his burgeoning intelligence, this most successful of all mammals has exploited the environment to produce food for an ever increasing population. Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it's time we controlled the population to allow the survival of the environment.”
― David Attenborough

“People often ask, "What is the single most important environmental population problem facing the world today?" A flip answer would be, "The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!”
― Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

“You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Les dimanches d'un bourgeois de Paris, et autres aventures parisiennes

“The Civilized… murder their children by producing too many of them without being able to provide for their well-being. Morality or theories of false virtue stimulate them to manufacture cannon fodder, anthills of conscripts who are forced to sell themselves out of poverty. This improvident paternity is a false virtue, the selfishness of pleasure.”
― Charles Fourier

“Our object must be to bring our territory into harmony with the numbers of our population.”
― Adolf Hitler

“Europe is overpopulated, the world will soon be in the same condition, and if the self-reproduction of man is not rationalized... we shall have war.”
― Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion

“The world has a very serious problem, my friend' Shiva went on. 'Poor children still die by their millions. Westerners and the global rich -- like me -- live in post-scarcity society, while a billion people struggle to get enough to eat. And we're pushing the planet towards a tipping point, where the corals die and the forests burn and life becomes much, much harder. We have the resources to solve those problems, even now, but politics and economics and nationalism all get in the way. If we could access all those minds, though...”
― Ramez Naam, Crux

“When we came and rented the North Perth home, my father had a little ice chest, and on top of the ice chest was a radio. And we were sitting at our lunch time on Sunday eating dinner after church, and my Mum says, ‘Look where we’ve ended up. We’ve got a table cloth on our table, we’ve got food on our plate, and we’re listening to music.’ That was a big thing for my mother. - Mrs Helen Doropoulos, Greece”
― Peter Brune, Suffering, Redemption and Triumph: The first wave of post-war Australian immigrants 1945-66

“Man begets, but land does not beget. ”
― Cecil Rhodes

“Capitalism is a social system owned by the capitalistic class, a small network of very wealthy and powerful businessmen, who compromise the health and security of the general population for corporate gain.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“When we can treat all existing persons as human, it will be time enough to think about having more.”
― Athelstan Spilhaus

“The human population would probably be way less than a thousand, if ejaculation were not usually accompanied by an orgasm.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Overpopulation is by far the worst kind of pollution.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Malthus has been buried many times, and Malthusian scarcity with him. But as Garrett Hardin remarked, anyone who has to be reburied so often cannot be entirely dead.”
― Herman E. Daly, Steady-State Economics: The Economics of Biophysical Equilibrium and Moral Growth

“The obvious pollution occurring in many places - worst of all, in the planned societies- has encouraged the growth of the environmental movement, which, however, as shown in previous chapters, has an agenda that goes far beyond clean-up and beautification, far beyond the stewardship of nature that is commanded by ancient religious tradition. Embracing the "biospheric vision" in the "spirit of deep ecology", the movement sees human beings as the chief enemy in the struggle on behalf of a deified Nature. The environmental movement, therefore, is the perfect vehicle for population control. It is popular - people do love trees and animals and beautiful scenery - and it is unequivocal in its devotion to reducing human numbers. The environmental agencies of the United Nations, with their chilling blueprints for "demographic transition" and a standardless, undefined but totally planned and controlled "sustainable development", combine the fervor of nature worship with the lack of accountability of an unelected, international bureaucracy.”
― Jacqueline Kasun, The War Against Population: The Economics and Ideology of World Population Control

“People need people and the happiest people are
surrounded with friendly flesh.
If you have ten kids they'll be so sweet --
ten really sweet kids! Have twelve!
What if there were 48 pro baseball teams,
you could see a damn lot more games!
And in this fashion we get away
from tragedy. Because tragedy comes when someone
gets too special. ”
― Mark Halliday

“The ultimate measure of human success is not production but reproduction. Economic productivity and profit are means to reproductive ends, not ends in themselves.”
― Pierre L. van den Berghe, The Ethnic Phenomenon

“Corrupt police departments are a form of oppression of the people.”
― Steven Magee

“For billions of years, evolution has been driven by competition caused by the simple fact that, left unchecked, all living things can reproduce faster than their environment can sustain”
― Malcolm Potts, Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World

“We are, as a species, in the process of proving Malthus’s proposition that population will always outstrip resources.”
― Malcolm Potts, Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World

“The human population is the worst pollutant.”
― KRISHNA MURTHY ANNIGERI VASUDEVA RAO, FLOWERS OF STARDUST

“We mustn't run short of filmbase," the Duke said. "Else, how could we flood village and city with our information? The people must learn how well I govern them. How would they know if we didn't tell them?”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“I mean, who even are the English? The descendants of the Germanic tribes? We're a great hotchpotch really, aren't we? A mishmash of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans, et cetera, et cetera, to a complicatedly hybrid ancestry, barely united for centuries, and our borders always shifting. We're not a pure, homogenous race sprung from English soil, are we? When people talk about Englishness, I often get a whiff of frowsty Victorian velvet," she mused, articulating more expansively with her hands as she warmed to her theme. "It makes me think of paintings of King Alfred, Ivanhoe and Tennyson, people putting on dressing-up clothes to do archery, and William Morris tapestries. Perhaps Englishness is less about geography and historical dates and more about symbols and emotions? There are lots of tripwires and misty hollows between the lions and unicorns, aren't there? When you begin to think about what Englishness means--- and, by extension, English food--- it all starts to become rather precarious and complicated, doesn't it?”
― Caroline Scott, Good Taste

“As long as we remain a planet of 7-plus billion, close-packed and widely traveled, with a love for meat, eggs, and milk, infections will be a force in our lives.”
― Charles Kenny, The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease

“Trade and collaboration, the transfer of goods, people and ideas, are central to supporting health systems as well as developing and rolling out tests, treatments, and cures. We cannot respond effectively alone. We have to respond collectively.”
― Charles Kenny, The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease

“Educating people is always the solution. Peace is never guaranteed, but the most likely path to it is to have an enlightened, self-aware populace that’s been taught how to think critically and question everything. People like that are difficult to manipulate.

– Lindsay Buroker. "Layers of Force:" Star Kingdom, Book 8 (Kindle Locations 2920-2942).”
― Lindsay Buroker

“Without external threats and challenges people just fall apart. Imagine a video game where you start with infinite hit points, currency, and weapons. Your video game character would just turn into a complete degenerate who would just mess around out of boredom, the entire society would turn into Grand Theft Auto. Keep in mind the vast majority of people are selfish, dumb, and foolish, especially so without societies that socialize them to be better. Without external pressure, society collapses into degeneracy.”
― Whatifalthist