Garrett Hardin Quotes

But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.

You cannot do only one thing.

(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)

No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.

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

People are the quintessential element in all technology... Once we recognize the inescapable human nexus of all technology our attitude toward the reliability problem is fundamentally changed.

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.

Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.

Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

The only thing we can really count on in this uncertain world is human unreliability itself.

Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.

There is nothing more dangerous than a shallow thinking compassionate person

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

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.

Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed.

But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.

A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.

In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.

Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.

However, I think the major opposition to ecology has deeper roots than mere economics; ecology threatens widely held values so fundamental that they must be called religious.

The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.

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

In an approximate way, the logic of commons has been understood for a long time, perhaps since the discovery of agriculture or the invention of private property in real estate.

The three filters [against folly] operate through these particular questions: Literacy: What are the words? Numeracy: What are the numbers? Ecolacy: And then what?

Ecology is the overall science of which economics is a minor speciality.

The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them.

An attack on values is inevitably seen as an act of subversion.

The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.

Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.

Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.

The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.

The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.

To say that we mutually agree to coercion is not to say that we are required to enjoy it, or even to pretend we enjoy it.

We see only what we have names for.

Every measured thing is part of a web of variables more richly interconnected than we know.

Ecological differentiation is the necessary condition for coexistence.

Incommensurables cannot be compared.

What features of your daily life do you expect to be improved by a further increase in population?

Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity

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

We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.

Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.

The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.

The greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically. At the very least, we should always seek another opinion.

Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.

Never globalize a problem if it can possibly be dealt with locally.

Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'

Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.

The individual benefits as an individual from his ability to deny the truth even though society as a whole, of which he is a part, suffers.