Human beings are the center of the universe from only one perspective, and that is our own.
The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
You can never do merely one thing. The law applies to any action that changes something in a complex system. The point is that an action taken to alleviate a problem will trigger several effects, some of which may offset or even negate the one intended.
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.
The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.
Numeracy: 1. The art of putting numbers to things, that is, assigning amounts to variables in order that practical decisions may be reach. 2. That aspect of education (beyond mere literacy) which takes account of quantitative aspects of reality.
The three filters [against folly] operate through these particular questions: Literacy: What are the words? Numeracy: What are the numbers? Ecolacy: And then what?
I enjoy punk, the attitude as well as the music, but I don't feel like I have to be a carbon copy of it and invite all this controversy just to be punk rock.
There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.
There will be no support in the island of Ireland for building a nuclear power station.
The idea that 'preaching the Gospel' has nothing to do with sex and that 'preaching about sex' has nothing to do with the Gospel betrays layers and layers of seriously misguided thinking. When we divorce God's love from sexual love, as Pope Benedict says, 'the essence of Christianity' becomes 'decisively cut off from the complex fabric of human life. '