Garrett Hardin Quotes

39 Sourced Quotes

Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit — in a world that is limited. 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 brings ruin to all.

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

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

Garrett Hardin
[One must show the greatest respect towards] any thing that increases exponentially, no matter how small.

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

Garrett Hardin
At this late date in the post-Christian Era, it might be questioned whether the Bible should even be brought into an ethical discussion. I argue that it should. Many people who do not explicitly call on the Bible for backing are nevertheless influenced by what they believe the Bible says. (Everyone knows about the Good Samaritan, even though they may not be able to remember what Samaritans in general were.) It is considered good form to speak politely of Scripture: revere it, but don't bother reading it seems to be the rule. Above all, don't read it thoughtfully.

Garrett Hardin
The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Garrett Hardin
The overall system of a sizeable community struggling to survive in a crowded world may be either socialism or privatism. Either system may work, more or less. But, except in non-critical areas of distribution, commonism cannot possibly work for very long.

Garrett Hardin
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.

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

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

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

Garrett Hardin
The god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs from moping over their situation must have also created fundamentalists to keep rationalists from getting flabby. Let us be duly thankful for our blessings.

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

Garrett Hardin
A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future. By contrast, those who, for whatever reason, regard the resources at their disposal as an inheritance from the past that they feel obliged to pass on to their descendants, have a better chance of producing future generations prosperous enough to be able to continue to wrestle with the problems of increasing the quality of life.

Garrett Hardin
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. Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce; it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies. 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. An attack on values is inevitably seen as an act of subversion.

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

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

Garrett Hardin
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.

Garrett Hardin
Ecological differentiation is the necessary condition for coexistence.

Garrett Hardin
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.

Garrett Hardin
Our desire to conserve wildlife for our children and our children's children forces us to bring out into the open conservation's secret question : Does God give a prize for the maximum number of human beings? Put another way, which shall we bequeath to our grandchildren : human life with nature, or human life without nature?

Garrett Hardin
Even at the religious level the creationist view is a biased one. The only creation story they mention is the one in Genesis (in which there are actually two stories — the version in the first chapter being so different from that in the second chapter that biblical scholars believe they were written hundreds of years apart). Why do they not mention the belief of the Hindus that the world began with the creation of the cosmic egg? What about the Babylonians' belief that there was not a single creationist god but two cosmic parents?

Garrett Hardin