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Quotes by Environmentalist
"I did a salad, but I didn't do a garden."
108
"Along the borders to Ethiopia and Somalia, anarchy reigns, the police and military have retreated quite some distance."
87
"One should not forget that there are very few surviving items from this period, often just single, small bones, a tooth, a sliver of the skull. Categorizing these pieces can be very difficult."
74
"Paleoanthropology is not a science that ends with the discovery of a bone. One has to have the original to work with. It is a life-long task."
73
"The elephants were being slaughtered in masses. Some were even killed in the vicinity of big tourist hotels."
72
"Elephants can live to an age of up to 70 or 80 years and they have a good memory. It could be they come across an area that is experiencing a drought. Then they continue on their path and run into people."
71
"Whether or not all this came to pass in an East African ditch, I wouldn't like to say. Perhaps it happened in North Africa or further west, but Africa was definitely the place."
68
"I would hazard a guess that we have found fossilized human remains of at least a thousand different specimens in South and East Africa, more or less complete at that. I think this is where the prelude to human history was primarily played out."
67
"We are concerned that, in a few years time, this place of discovery, with its wealth of human fossils, the like of which can be found nowhere else in the world, could be completely destroyed."
65
"Primates need good nutrition, to begin with. Not only fruits and plants, but insects as well."
65
"We think that groups of between 30 and 40 early men would have settled in an area measuring a hundred square kilometers."
Men,
65
"Earlier, 100,000 elephants lived in Kenya and we didn't have any noteworthy problem with it. The problem that we have is not that there are now more elephants."
Now,
64
"It is virtually impossible to control Northern Kenya, which is populated chiefly by migrant nomads."
64
"A number of scientists with greatly different backgrounds can come up with completely different assessments. The discussions or controversies are endless. Once a year, we try to bring the most important discoverers together to exchange their experiences and knowledge."
61
"We hope to find more pieces of the puzzle which will shed light on the connection between this upright, walking ape, our early ancestor, and modern man."
58
"I can't think of any other region in the world which is such a vast source of fossils."
52
"For fossils to thrive, certain favorable circumstances are required. First of all, of course, remnants of life have to be there. These then need to be washed over with water as soon as possible, so that the bones are covered with a layer of sediment."
44
"The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort."
43
"Industry is fortune's right hand, and frugality its left."
42
"The land is not in the least bit fertile and yet the cattle herds grow larger and larger. A cow represents capital investment here."
41
"Nothing is invented and perfected at the same time."
39
"To investigate the history of man's development, the most important finds are, of course, hominid fossils."
38
"The problem is that during the 1980s, a decade of heavy poaching, the elephants retreated to safer areas. And now people have moved into the corridors once used by the elephants."
38
"Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble."
38
"Sadly, I am not able to take part in the fieldwork myself so much anymore, as both of my legs were amputated following an airplane crash twelve years ago."
37
"Birds have wings; they're free; they can fly where they want when they want. They have the kind of mobility many people envy."
35
"To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world."
34
"I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do."
34
"Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them."
34
"Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left."
34
"It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder."
34
"On the recollection of so many and great favours and blessings, I now, with a high sense of gratitude, presume to offer up my sincere thanks to the Almighty, the Creator and Preserver."
33
"Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there."
33
"We've pumped waste into cavities in solid rock and found that it spread through the rock."
32
"Everyone except the far right wing of the Republican Party realizes that oil, gas and coal burning are the main activities that have sent the climate into bigger floods, droughts, hurricanes, and El Ninos."
31
"A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant - rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance - but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself."
31
"There are many different kinds of radioactive waste and each has its own half-life so, just to be on the safe side and to simplify matters, I base my calculations on the worst one and that's plutonium."
31
"Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want."
31
"Intelligent policies will be largely self-regulating in the sense that the system of incentives and standards makes it absolutely ludicrous to not move towards clean, internalized systems of cost and production."
31
"The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected."
30
"I can recognize the calls of practically every bird in North America. There are some in Africa I don't know, though."
30
"In a thousand pounds of law there is not an ounce of love."
30
"You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere."
29
"In 1994 the U.S. Court of Appeals decided in the case of Oliver North to permit the release of grand jury evidence, because it had already been so thoroughly leaked."
29
"Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without."
29
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