David Hewlett Quotes

Human nature is to blame for everything, innit? We're just a disease on this planet.

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.

In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that He did not also limit his stupidity.

Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet - the only one in the whole Milky Way - with a century of transportation whoopee.

Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.

Human beings should be held accountable. Leave God alone. He has enough problems.

Every technology that can improve the human condition could harm the human condition. Someone evil could program a robot to hurt people.

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

I say this as an engineer: We are profoundly bad at asking ourselves how the things we build could be misused.

What compelled me about the story of Chernobyl more than anything else was something very universal. Yes, Chernobyl happened because in many ways, the Soviet system was deeply corrupt and evil, but the Soviet system did not arrive to us from some other planet. It was devised by humans.

Chacun exige d'e" tre innocent, a' tout prix, me" me si, pour cela, il faut accuser le genre humain et le ciel. Everyone insists on his or her innocence, at all costs, even if it means accusing the rest of the human race and heaven.

My basic political posture is "what a shame the human race did this to earth." What we have done environmentally, politically, culturally.

There are no evils in Nature, there are only evils of Man.

The Rudderless World is not shaped by vague metaphysical Forces. It is not God who kills the Children. Not Fate that butchers them or Destiny that feeds them to the Dogs. ... It´s us. Only us.

Man has created death.

To err is human; to forgive, infrequent.

To err is human, but to forgive, well that's right on.

People are trying to decide whether the man-made disaster is worse than Mother Nature's disaster.

All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them.

The human species was given dominion over the earth and took the opportunity to exterminate other species and warm the atmosphere and generally ruin things in its own image, but it paid this price for its privileges: that the finite and specific animal body of this species contained a brain capable of conceiving the infinite and wishing to be infinite itself.

We conservatives bemoan the decline in values that has besieged our society. Why then should we not abhor the lack of morality involved in discharging untested chemicals into the air, ground, and water to alter and harm, to whatever degree, human life and wildlife? As a conservative, I do abhor it.

The problem is compounded by the fact that the connection between cause and effect seems so improbable. By turning on the lights, filling the kettle, taking the children to school, driving to the shops, we are condemning other people to death. We never chose to do this. We do not see ourselves as killers. We perform these acts without passion or intent.

All men of goodwill have this in common - that our works put us to shame.

Most of the damage we cause to the planet is the result of our own ignorance.

I just wonder what it would be like to be reincarnated in an animal whose species had been so reduced in numbers than it was in danger of extinction. What would be its feelings toward the human species whose population explosion had denied it somewhere to exist. I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus.