Ronald Wright Quotes

6 Sourced Quotes

If civilization is to survive, it must live on the interest, not the capital, of nature.

Ronald Wright

Like most problems with technology, pollution is a problem of scale. The biosphere might have been able to tolerate our dirty old friends coal and oil if we burned them gradually, but how long can it withstand a blaze of consumption so frenzied that the dark size of this planet glows like a fanned ember in the night of space.

Ronald Wright

Capitalism lures us onward like the mechanical hare before the greyhounds,
insisting that the economy is infinite and sharing therefore irrelevant. Just enough greyhounds catch a
real hare now and then to keep the others running till they drop. In the past it was only the poor who
lost this game; now it is the planet.

Ronald Wright

Like all creatures, humans have made their way in the world by trial and error. Unlike other creatures we have a presence so colossal that error is a luxury we can no longer afford. The world has grown too small to forgive us any big mistakes.

Ronald Wright

America seemed a virgin land waiting for civilization. But Europe had made the wilderness it found; America was not a virgin, she was a widow.

Ronald Wright

Societies that do not eat people are fascinated by those that do.

Ronald Wright

Ronald Wright

Ronald Wright

Creative Commons

Born: 1948 (age 76)

Bio: Ronald Wright is a Canadian author who has written books of travel, history and fiction. His nonfiction includes the bestseller Stolen Continents, winner of the Gordon Montador Award and chosen as a book of the year by the Independent and the Sunday Times.

Known for:

A Short History of Progress (2004)
The Gold Eaters: A Novel (2015)
Stolen continents (1992)
A Scientific Romance (1997)
What is America? (2008)

Ronald Wright on Wikipedia

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