Even very smart people can try to shoehorn new information that just doesn't fit into an existing paradigm. … - Elizabeth Kolbert

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Quote of the day

I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited on France.

Elizabeth Kolbert

Even very smart people can try to shoehorn new information that just doesn't fit into an existing paradigm. For a long time the story that we've been telling ourselves is that humans are just another animal. We evolved from other animals and our place in the universe isn't particularly special. What I'm trying to convey my book [The Sixth Extinction] is that we are unusual.

Animal, Book, Information, Sixth, Smart, Universe

Same Author Quotes

People tend to focus on the here and now. The problem is that, once global warming is something that most people can feel in the course of their daily lives, it will be too late to prevent much larger, potentially catastrophic changes.

Catastrophic, Course, Focus, Motivational, People

It doesn’t much matter whether people care or don’t care. What matters is that people change the world.

Matter, Matters, People, What Matters, World

It is estimated that one-third of all reef-building corals, a third of all fresh-water mollusks, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all mammals, a fifth of all reptiles, and a sixth of all birds are headed toward oblivion. The losses are occurring all over: in the South Pacific and in the North Atlantic, in the Arctic and the Sahel, in lakes and on islands, on mountaintops and in valleys.

Lakes, Loss, Reptiles, Sahel, Sharks, Toward

We have all this Paleolithic art that suggests that our ancestors really venerated animals and that they depended on wild animals to survive - as opposed to domesticated animals that we depend on. Would it radically change things if we had more rhinos in our midst? I kind of suspect it would.

Ancestors, Animal, Art, Domesticated, Kind, Opposed

It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the processnof doing.

Choose, Climate, Essence, May, Society