Resource Management Quotes

I think it killed the performance on a lot of the systems in the Labs for years because everyone had their own copy of it, but it wasn't being shared, and so they wasted huge amounts of memory back when memory was expensive.

[For gunpowder] we are so exceedingly destitute that our artillery will be of little use without a supply which is large and seasonable. What we have must be reserved for the small arms, and that managed with the utmost frugality.

Our forest policy is not to preserve forests because they are beautiful—though that is a good in itself—not to preserve them because they are refuges for wild creatures of the wilderness—though that is a good in itself—but rather to conserve them in order to guarantee a steady and continuous supply of timber, grass, and above all, water.

Land is not something you inherit from your parents. It is something you borrow from your children.

As a community we have been living beyond our means…. We have been living at a rate which is simply not justified by the amounts of goods and services we are producing.

Do not march or precipitate your attack. The Saracens are like a torrent which is dangerous to stem … Be patient till they have loaded themselves with the encumbrances of wealth.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

This urbanization that's taking place around the world is very real. But if it's people that are seeking an urbanized environment out of desperation, that's not going to be helpful long term.

Even an ideal set of trade-offs must—and should—leave a whole spectrum of unmet needs, because the cost of wiping out the last vestige of any problem is leaving other problems in more dire condition. In short, trade-offs must be incremental rather than categorical, if limited resources are to produce optimal results in any social system as a whole.

A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.

Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.

Pollution and the exhaustion of natural resources depend and will depend in the future on the absolute level of total economic activity. This means that is necessary to restrain both the rate of growth of population and, at least in the developed countries, the rate of growth of consumption per head.

It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.

Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.

The key to understanding overpopulation is not population density but the numbers of people in an area relative to its resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities; that is, to the area’s carrying capacity. When is an area overpopulated? When its population can’t be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources.... By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated

The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC.

Fresh, clean water cannot be taken for granted. And it is not - water is political, and litigious. Transporting water is impractical for both political and physical reasons, so buying up water rights did not make a lot of sense to me, unless I was pursuing a greater fool theory of investment - which was not my intention.

Oil is what this country runs on. You call it monopoly. I call it enterprise.

The fruits [game and natural resources] may be easier tasted than believed.

Money is always to be found when men are to be sent to the frontiers to be destroyed: when the object is to preserve them, it is no longer so

The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment to those excluded from the appropriation.

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.

Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed

One man will carry two buckets of water for his own use, Two men will carry one for their joint use; Three men will carry none for anybody's use.