Bertrand Russell Quotes

The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century.

How much good it would do if one could exterminate the human race.

The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.

There are plenty of problems in the world, many of them interconnected. But there is no problem which compares with this central, universal problem of saving the human race from extinction.

I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race.

There are plenty of people on Earth. It's not like the human race is going to disappear if a few people don't come back. Exploration is dangerous.

There are risks which are not acceptable: the destruction of humanity is one of them.

There's no question that if we stay on planet Earth and never leave, that eventually we'll be wiped out.

If I had to predict, the way things are going, I'd say the chances are about 50-50 that humanity will be extinct or nearly extinct within 50 years. Weapons of mass destruction, disease, I mean this global warming is scaring the living daylights out of me.

We could not wipe ourselves out with a nuclear war. I do not want so sound too positive. It would be a catastrophe, but it would not be a final one. We are not powerful enough for that. An asteroid could be that powerful. That is why we need to do our homework.

Humanity as a species must change dramatically and radically or our survival is at stake.

Do they see the lethal insanity of a race to the brink of oblivion, and then over the edge? Apparently not. If they did, surely they wouldn't be racing to begin with. Or is it a simple failure of imagination? One doesn't like to think such a rudimentary failing could bring about the end, yet...

As long as nuclear weapons exist, the chances of survival of the human species are quite slight.

The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race can no more be exterminated than the flea can be. The last man lives the longest.

You can certainly destroy enough of humanity so that only the greatest act of faith can persuade you that what's left will be human.

Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space.

The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale: to an observer in the Andromeda nebula, the sign of our extinction would be no more than a match flaring for a second in the heavens: and if that match does blaze in the darkness there will be none to mourn a race that used a power that could have lit a beacon in the stars to light its funeral pyre. The choice is ours.

Suppose atomic bombs had reduced the population of the world to one brother and sister; should they let the human race die out?

I used to agree with Kurt Vonnegut, who said that the human race has a snowball's chance in hell of being around a hundred years from now.

Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous social behaviors that will avoid extinction.

The race that does not value trained intelligence is doomed.

Folly is perennial and yet the human race has survived.

The universe that suckled us is a monster that does not care if we live or die--it does not care if it itself grinds to a halt. It is a beast running on chance and death, careening from nowhere to nowhere. It is fixed and blind, a robot programmed to kill. We are free and seeing; we can only try to outwit it at every turn to save our lives.

Vitally, the human race is dying. It is like a great uprooted tree, with its roots in the air. We must plant ourselves again in the universe.

We all live under the constant threat of our own annihilation. Only by the most outrageous violation of ourselves have we achieved our capacity to live in relative adjustment to a civilization apparently driven to its own destruction.