David Roberts Quotes & Sayings

The black line is carbon emissions to date. The red line is the status quo - a projection of where emissions will go if no new substantial policy is passed to restrain greenhouse gas emissions. — David Roberts

Everett was a loner, but he liked people too damn much to stay down there and live the rest of his life in secret. A lot of us are like that [ ... ]: We like companionship, see, but we can't stand to be around people for very long. So we get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again. Everett was strange. Kind of strange. But him and [Christopher] McCandless, at least they tried to follow their dream. They tried. Not many do. (Ken Sleight) — David Roberts

I went to the Grand Canyon with my family when I was about 8 years old, and I had a very blah experience. I think the scale of it is too huge - you don't appreciate it. — David Roberts

Nobody realizes that Mormons were the first Americans to settle Las Vegas. — David Roberts

If you can't laugh at yourself, then likely other people will. — David Roberts

Since 1969, more than 30,000 specimens of stone from outer space that have survived their headlong plunge through the earth's atmosphere have been recovered from the southern continent. One of them, retrieved in 2003, has been proven, thanks to a remarkable analysis by spectrograph, to have once been part of the planet Mars. — David Roberts

When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards-some sort of climate Nuremberg. — David Roberts

People say 'Why do you make pots?' Because I'm compelled to - life isn't right without it. — David Roberts

A student of Syrian affairs soon becomes used to paradox. A comparatively small country, narrowly chauvinistic and jealous of its national sovereignty, Syria is nevertheless the repository, and has often been the origin, of oecumenical and transcendental ideas about Arab unity. Its society is one of the most heterogeneous in the Middle East and yet its leaders have been the proponents of a radical integrative political movement: Arab Nationalism. It has kindly and hospitable inhabitants, but it is also a police state where a man can be locked up indefinitely without a trial. Your Syrian friends are your friends for life, but a curious current of xenophobia runs through the country. Syrians love culture and natural beauty, but the ugliness of many Syrians towns and their architecture has to be seen to be believed. — David Roberts

The earliest dated monument yet discovered in Tikal and all of the Maya lowlands, Stela 29, has a Long Count date of 8.12.14.13.15, which translates to A.D. 292. — David Roberts

When you sling a saddle atop a llama's back, just after he's rolled in the dirt to scratch the unscratchable tickle of having lugged an ungrateful hiker's 90 pounds of impedimenta another eight miles along the trail, you're struck by how matted, coarse, and snarly the wool seems. But that's why it makes for versatile outdoor wear. — David Roberts

During the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica in the 16th century, the Catholic Church's Friar Diego de Landa supervised the burning of hundreds of Maya codices - fig-bark books rich in mythological and astronomical information. Only four Maya codices are known to have survived. — David Roberts

It's not at all naturally human to see something like the Grand Canyon as beautiful. — David Roberts

Though Tikal may have been settled by at least 600 B.C., most of the city's edifices were built during what is called the Classic period of Maya history, from A.D. 250 to 900. — David Roberts

The United States came within a whisker of invading Utah in 1858 and starting a civil war three years before the Civil War. Because the conflict ended up fizzling out, it's not the most dramatic story about the West. — David Roberts

I knew that alpaca wool, with its cashmere-soft weave, had been transformed into cuddly knick-knacks ranging from pillows to teddy bears. But through selective breeding over the past 6,000 years, alpacas have so diverged from their llama cousins as to become quite different animals. — David Roberts

Perhaps the greatest Maya mystery of all is the cause of the civilization's abrupt decline. The last dated stela erected at Tikal was put up in A.D. 869; the last anywhere in the Maya world, in 909. — David Roberts

As scientific research demonstrates, llama wool's very coarseness and its range of fibers from fine to thick mean that it can be woven into clothing that's superior to down, fleece, sheep wool, and alpaca wool in criteria ranging from warmth to water resistance to usable life. — David Roberts

I was doing research on the Mormon handcart tragedy when I came across information about Brigham Young sending out missions to the Indians in 1855. — David Roberts