#extinction

It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well correspond to the thickening armor of the great reptiles—a tendency that can end only in extinction. If this should happen to be true, nothing stemming from thought can interfere with it or bend it. Conscious thought seems to have little effect on the action or direction of our species. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#farming #human-development #production #thought #war

And I have lived since - as you have - in a period of cold war, during which we have ensured by our achievements in the science and technology of destruction that a third act in this tragedy of war will result in the peace of extinction. ↗

— Lester B. Pearson

#act #cold #cold war #destruction #during

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#extinction #science #survival #experience

Experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place. ↗

— Iain Banks

#experience

We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought. ↗

— Thomas Bernhard

#extinction #failure #thought #nature

At issue was the question whether this man's faith could prevail against a man whose equal faith it was that this society is sick beyond saving, and that mercy itself pleads for its swift extinction and replacement by another. ↗

— Whittaker Chambers

#another #beyond #could #equal #extinction

The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals. ↗

— Thomas Huxley

#existence #extinction #holds #intellectual #much

Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time. ↗

— P.D. James

#life #life

Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values. ↗

— Jose Ortega y Gasset

#feeling #hatred #leads #values #which

This is not a matter of weapons. We are hopeful for God's help. The real matter is the extinction of America. And, God willing, it will fall to the ground. ↗

— Mohammed Omar

#extinction #fall #god #ground #help