The trouble with water-and there is trouble with water-is that they're not making any more of it. They're … - Marq de Villiers

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People think of faith as being something that you don't really believe, a device in helping you believe simply it. Of course that is quite wrong. As Pascal says, faith is a gift of God. It is different from the proof of it. It is the kind of faith God himself places in the heart, of which the proof is often the instrument. . . He says of it, too, that it is the heart which is aware of God, and not reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not be reason.

Marq de Villiers

The trouble with water-and there is trouble with water-is that they're not making any more of it. They're not making any less, mind, but no more either. There is the same amount of water in the planet now as there was in prehistoric times.

Water, Mind, Environmental, Times, Same

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I understood when I was just a child that without water, everything dies. I didn't understand until much later that no one "owns" water. It might rise on your property, but it just passes through. You can use it, and abuse it, but it is not yours to own. It is part of the global commons, not "property" but part of our life support system.

Children, Everything, Global, Passes, Support Systems, Water

One of the signs of the imminent Apocalypse is the "bitterness of all waters," and anyone traveling through eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and its satellites-everywhere that the command economy operated, with its callous disregard for anything but narrow-focused abstract principle-could be forgiven for thinking that the Apocalypse was no longer imminent but in full cry. There's hardly a river, stream, or brook that isn't contaminated with the runoff from human misuse, whether industrial effluents, agricultural pesticides and herbicides, or worse.

Europe, Human, Longer, Rivers, Soviet, Thinking

Over 1 billion people have no access to clean drinking water, and more than 2. 9 billion have no access to sanitation services. The reality is that a child dies every eight seconds from drinking contaminated water, and the sanitation trend is getting sharply worse, mostly because of the worldwide drift of the rural peasantry to urban slums.

Children, Drinking, Reality, Sanitation, Slums

All over East Africa-indeed, all over Africa-it is normal for people to walk a kilometer or two or six for water. In more arid areas, people walk even greater distances, and sometimes all they find at the end is a pond slimy with overuse. More than 90 percent of Africans still dig for their water, and waterborne diseases such as typhoid, dysentery, bilharzia, and cholera are common. The bodies of many Africans are a stew of parasites. In some areas the wells are so far below the earth's surface that chains of people are required to pass up the water.

Distance, Two, Water, Stew, Pass, People

Per capita availability of good, potable water is diminishing in all developed and developing countries.

Availability, Countries, Country, Developing, Diminishing, Water