Garrett Hardin Quotes

• You cannot do only one thing.

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Yourself

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Public, Frontier, Conditions

• 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.

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Ourselves, Coercion

• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else.

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Family

  Tags in Universal, Declaration, Human Rights

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

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Social Responsibility

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Rational, Man, Purifying

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

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Optimum, Population

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

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Mutual, Coercion

• 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.

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Society

  Tags in Ruin, Destination, Interest

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

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Positive

  Tags in Growth, Evidence, Population

• 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.

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Principles, Political, Ecological

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Mankind, Conscience

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

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Positive

  Tags in Resources, Earth

• Incommensurables cannot be compared.

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Incommensurable

• 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.

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Agriculture, Discovery

• 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.

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Religious, Ecology

• Fundamentalists are panicked by the apparent disintegration of the family, the disappearance of certainty and the decay of morality. Fear leads them to ask, if we cannot trust the Bible, what can we trust?

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Fundamentalists, Certainty, Morality

• Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Freedom

• 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

  Topics in Education, Knowledge

  Tags in Succession, Generations

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

  Garrett Hardin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Continuity, Heart, Conservatism

Garrett Hardin (29)

Birth:	21st April, 1915
Death:	14th September, 2003
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Ecologist, Environmentalist, Professor

About

Garrett James Hardin was born in Dallas, Texas, USA. He was an American ecologist and environmentalist who warned of the dangers of overpopulation. His exposition of the tragedy of the commons, in a famous 1968 paper in Science, called attention to "the damage that innocent actions by individuals can inflict on the environment". He is also known for Hardin's First Law of Human Ecology: "You cannot do only one thing", which "modestly implies that there is at least one unwanted consequence". He received a B.S. in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1936 and a Ph.D.in microbiology from Stanford University in 1941. He served as Professor of Human Ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1963-1978.

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