Steven Soderbergh Quotes

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

We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.

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

A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.

I can't see the forest through the trees, except the trees are people.

The nature of man is intricate. The objects of society are of the greatest complexity and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature or to the quality of his affairs.

The legislative agenda reflects the complication of society.

The states have never had a voice when it comes to immigration or population policy. I think that needs to change.

People won't want powers being handed back from bureaucrats in Brussels to be given to bureaucrats in Britain. Our aim should be to give the British people greater control of their lives in all regards.

Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.

This seems counterintuitive, but turns out that as infant mortality is reduced, population sizes also decrease, because parents don't need to anticipate that their babies are going to die.

If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!

The time has already come when each country needs a considered national policy about what size of population, whether larger or smaller than at present or the same, is most expedient. And having settled this policy, we must take steps to carry it into operation. The time may arrive a little later when the community as a whole must pay attention to the innate quality as well as to the mere numbers of its future members.

A natural environment is far more complex than any playing field.

In Britain, what we've done is say to 485 million people, 'You can all come, every one of you. You're unemployed? You've got a criminal record? Please come. You've got 19 children? Please come.' We've lost any sense of perspective on this.

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people, most - than most proposals for involuntarily fertility control.

I watched the sheets breathe when she breathed, like how Dad used to say that trees inhale when people exhale, because I was too young to understand the truth about biological processes.

People are messy and complex, particularly in the homosexual world.

By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth's population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people.

Obviously, given the objective that we have, what I would hope is that people would be able to see that actually we had reduced the numbers of people, the net number of people, coming into the country. People would, presumably, see that, but it's difficult to say how.

More people need to inhabit this world.

The fundamental task is to achieve smallness within large organisation.

Chinese are already more on board than we are. China is the only country that actually discussed in formal government documents how important it is to control the size of your populations if you’re going to limit emissions.

In early times, it was easier to control a million people than to kill a million. Today, it is infinitely easier to to kill a million people than to control a million.

We are 6.6 billion people now. We can only feed 4 billion. I don't see 2 billion volunteers to disappear.