Chinese Proverb Quotes

There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead

Man will survive as a species for one reason: He can adapt to the destructive effects of our power-intoxicated technology and of our ungoverned population growth, to the dirt, pollution and noise of a New York or Tokyo. And that is the tragedy. It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life.

The sea is a place where every day, half the population eats the other half.

Evolution is like walking on a rolling barrel. The walker isn't so much interested in where the barrel is going as he is in keeping on top of it.

Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern and randomness interlace.

In terms of the game theory, we might say the universe is so constituted as to maximize play. The best games are not those in which all goes smoothly and steadily toward a certain conclusion, but those in which the outcome is always in doubt. Similarly, the geometry of life is designed to keep us at the point of maximum tension between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos. Every important call is a close one. We survive and evolve by the skin of our teeth. We really wouldn't want it any other way.

You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.

Nature, through all her kingdoms, insures herself.

And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.

True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced.

Environmental degradation and pollution constrain economic growth, contribute to large-scale migration, harm public health, and engender social unrest.

… human population growth within the ecosystem was closely analogous to the growth of malignant tumor cells within an organism: that man was acting like a cancer on the biosphere. The multiplication of human numbers certainly seems wild and uncontrolled... Four million a month - the equivalent of the population of Chicago... We seem to be doing all right at the moment; but if you could ask cancer cells, I suspect they would think they were doing fine. But when the organism dies, so do they; and for our own, selfish, practical, utilitarian reasons, I think we should be careful about how we influence the rest of the ecosystem.

True conservation means protecting the entire habitat.

China is the world’s second largest economy, but the enormous costs of its growth are becoming apparent. Residents of its boom cities and a growing number of rural regions question the safety of the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat. It is as if they were living in the Chinese equivalent of the Chernobyl or Fukushima nuclear disaster areas. The environmental hazards here are legion, and the consequences might not manifest themselves for years or even decades.

More people have smart phones than clean water

The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat

No water—no jobs.

I have always seen pollution as theft.

Governor Nelson Rockefeller spent more money in New York to assure clean water than did the entire Federal Government.

Life is full of contrasts.

The world is a complex place.

Equilibrium is a figment of the human imagination.

Do the math. Expect catastrophes. Whatever happens, stay the course.

Chaos demands to be recognized and experienced before letting itself be converted into a new order.

We're never gonna survive unless we go a little crazy.