Commoner Quotes & Sayings

The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe. — Barry Commoner

Seen that way, the wholesale transformation of production technologies that is mandated by pollution prevention creates a new surge of economic development. — Barry Commoner

The weapons were conceived and created by a small band of physicists and chemists; they remain a cataclysmic threat to the whole of human society and the natural environment. — Barry Commoner

Despite the dazzling successes of modern technology and the unprecedented power of modern military systems, they suffer from a common and catastrophic fault. While providing us with a bountiful supply of food, with great industrial plants, with high-speed transportation, and with military weapons of unprecedented power, they threaten our very survival. — Barry Commoner

Theirs was a story of two people bound strongly to one another yet forbidden to be together. He was royalty, she was a commoner. — Kristen Britain

He, unfortunately for himself, had been beautifully brought up. His teacher had educated him as the child is educated in the womb, where it lives the history of man from fish to mammal
and, like the child in the womb, he had been protected with love meanwhile. The effect of such an education was that he had grown up without any of the useful accomplishments for living
without malice, vanity, suspicion, cruelty, and the commoner forms of selfishness. Jealousy seemed to him the most ignoble of vices. He was sadly unfitted for hating his best friend or torturing his wife. He had been given too much love and trust to be good at these things. — T.H. White

In recent years it has become impossible to talk about man's relation to nature without referring to "ecology" ... such leading scientists in this area as Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Eugene Odum, Paul Ehrlich and others, have become our new delphic voices ... so influential has their branch of science become that our time might well be called the "Age of Ecology". — Rachel Carson

Nothing, however, can be more arrogant, though nothing is commoner than to assume that of Gods there is only one, and of religions none but the speaker's. — Virginia Woolf

Perhaps one of the most meaningful ways to sense the impact of the environmental crisis is to confront the question which is always asked about Lake Erie: how can we restore it? I believe the only valid answer is that no one knows. For it should be clear that even if overnight all of the pollutants now pouring into Lake Erie were stopped, there would still remain the problem of the accumulated mass of pollutants in the lake bottom. — Barry Commoner

The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world'd luxuries, king by grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented. — Mark Twain

The gap between brute power and human need continues to grow, as the power fattens on the same faulty technology that intensifies the need. — Barry Commoner

Because the global ecosystem is a connected whole, in which nothing can be gained or lost and which is not subject to over-all improvement, anything extracted from it by human effort must be replaced. Payment of this price cannot be avoided; it can only be delayed. The present environmental crisis is a warning that we have delayed nearly too long. — Barry Commoner

Perhaps the simplest example is a synthetic plastic, which unlike natural materials, is not degraded by biological decay. It therefore persists as rubbish or is burned-in both cases causing pollution. In the same way, a substance such as DDT or lead, which plays no role in the chemistry of life and interferes with the actions of substances that do, is bound to cause ecological damage if sufficiently concentrated. — Barry Commoner

The first principle of my own philosophy is that wisdom is meant for anyone who wishes to reach for it. It is the servant of commoner and king alike and should never be regarded with awe. — L. Ron Hubbard

When meeting royalty, it is very important, no matter how excited you are, not to vomit on them. Instead, vomit on the nearest commoner. — Stephen Colbert

Sooner or later,
wittingly or unwittingly,
we must pay
for every intrusion
on the natural environment. — Barry Commoner

You didn't really hold back on Braga so Pickering could kill him, did you?" Royce asked after the two were left alone in the hallway.
"Of course not. I held off because it's death for a commoner to kill a noble."
"That's what I thought." Royce sounded relieved. "For a minute, I wondered if you'd gone from jumping on the good-deed wagon to leading the whole wagon train. — Michael J. Sullivan

Transient states of depersonalisation are appreciably commoner during migraine auras. Freud reminds us that " ... the ego is first and foremost a body-ego ... the mental projection of the surface of the body." The sense of "self" appears to be based, fundamentally, on a continuous inference from the stability of body-image, the stability of outward perceptions, and the stability of time-perception. Feelings of ego-dissolution readily and promptly occur if there is serious disorder or instability of body-image, external perception, or time-perception, and all of these, as we have seen, may occur during the course of a migraine aura. — Oliver Sacks

The environmental crisis is a sign that the ecosphere is now so heavily strained that its continued stability is threatened. It is a warning that we must discover the source of this suicidal drive and master it before it destroys the environment-and ourselves. — Barry Commoner

Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life. — Barry Commoner

The modern technologist is less 'sorcerer' and more 'sorcerer's apprentice'. — Barry Commoner

Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art. — Barry Commoner

By adopting the control strategy, the nation's environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth. — Barry Commoner

Queen Lily Ruckler, negotiations have ceased with the Commoner leaders of the world. The time for attempting peace is over. There is no other viable option. Mystical-Commoner World War II has been officially declared. Strike now. My heartfelt regrets, Elder Richard Harcourt." I lowered the missive while Bonnie jumped onto the table, sitting regally but watching everyone warily in front of where I stood, and I stated, "We're officially at war. I want to strike Sydney's defenses within the hour, before they realize what's happening." My dead gaze landed on Antonio. I blinked, and then moved on to every gentleman and lady in the room, letting my power touch each of them so that no one would dare argue with me. "I will lead the attack alongside Elder Farrar."
I did.
I relished it, my rage finally finding a useful outlet.
Surprise, surprise, I fucking finally found something I excelled at.
Bloodshed. — Scarlett Dawn

When [Servius Galba] was a commoner he seemed too big for his station, and had he never been emperor, no one would have doubted his ability to reign. — Tacitus

A month before the Treasure Fleet's maiden voyage, at the age of thirty-four, Zheng He commissioned an epitaph inscribed on a stone pillar over his father's grave in Yunnan province. He worshiped his father, who had died in battle. The epitaph, one of only three known testimonials from the admiral, described his father's character:

'He was content as an ordinary commoner, but he was brave and decisive in his ordinary life. There was no one in this community who did not look up to him. When he encountered the unfortunate, including widows, orphans, and others with no one to rely on, he routinely offered protection and aid. He cherished the bestowal of extraordinary favours. By nature, he was fond of doing good.'

This revelation of a softer version of manhood as the ideal in much of Asia provided another piece of the answer to the question of how Westerners came to perceive Asians as less masculine. — Alex Tizon

I'm just some commoner trying to work in acting. — Sheridan Smith

For that reason the simple test of the slogan 'Consume Less' as a basis for social action on the environment would be to tell it to the blacks in the ghetto. The message will not be very well received for there are many people in this country who consume less than is needed to sustain a decent life. — Barry Commoner

John Paul II spoke to the commoner and to the king, to the tyrant and to the democrat in that same language of freedom. — Chris Matthews

Bravely you jog along with the rope of class distinction drawing closer, close, tighter, tighter around you ... I see it and know it, but I cannot help you ... I am only an unnecessary, little, bush commoner, I am only a - woman. — Miles Franklin

The age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over. — Barry Commoner

This is real, then?" Jaron's heart pounded, though he couldn't tell whether it was from sadness or fear for his future. "When you leave, I'm no longer Prince Jaron. I'll be nothing but a commoner. An orphan. — Jennifer A. Nielsen

The modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II. — Barry Commoner

If they were meant to really be together, why had they been born a prince and a commoner? And if they weren't, why did she feel this way inside? — Scott Westerfeld

World War II had a very important impact on the development of technology, as a whole. — Barry Commoner

Far commoner, and perhaps the most intolerable of all aura symptoms, is intense sudden vertigo accompanied by staggering, overwhelming nausea, and frequently vomiting. The — Oliver Sacks

Mother and Father worry he's half a commoner already, so they come down hard on anything that looks like sympathy for your sort. Is 'sympathy' the best word in this case, Abigail?"
His tone was sly and Abi flushed with embarrassment. But she had to persist. "And that's all there is to it? General disapproval? Because there's an evening I can't remember. I was worried that maybe I did something, and that's why."
"Can't remember? Someone's been doing housekeeping inside your head without your permission? How very impolite. I can take a look, if you like. — Vic James

Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it: nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing. — Jean De La Fontaine

Prince or commoner, tenor or bass,
Painter or plumber or never-do-well,
Do me a favor and shut your face -
Poets alone should kiss and tell. — Dorothy Parker

The most fortunate of men, Be he a king or commoner, is he Whose welfare is assured in his own home. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

very high standard, again, involves the possession of rare virtues, and rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal. People divide off vice and virtue as though they were two things, neither of which had with it anything of the other. This is not so. There is no useful virtue which has not some alloy of vice, and hardly any vice, if any, which carries not with it a little dash of virtue; virtue and vice are like life and death, or mind and matter - things which cannot exist without being qualified by their opposite. The most — Samuel Butler

Yachts are the closest a commoner can get to sovereignty. — Charles Simonyi

No one is exempt from the touch of tragedy: neither the Christian nor the non-Christian; neither the rich nor the poor; neither the leader or the commoner. Crossing all racial, social, political, and economic barriers, suffering reaches out to unite mankind. — Billy Graham

Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils - no, nor the human race, as I believe - and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day. — Plato

The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it. — Barry Commoner

boor (which originally just meant "farmer," as in the German Bauer and Dutch boer); villain (from the French vilein, a serf or villager); churlish (from English churl, a commoner); vulgar (common, as in the term vulgate); and ignoble, not an aristocrat. — Steven Pinker

All of the clean technologies are known, it's a question of simply applying them. — Barry Commoner

I don't believe in environmentalism as the solution to anything. What I believe is that environmentalism illuminates the things that need to be done to solve all of the problems together. — Barry Commoner

Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented. — Barry Commoner

Versailles has only existed for seven years. It does not have any ancient traditions. It was made by Colbert, the commoner. It is full of nobles, true; but you fool yourself if you believe that they feel comfortable there - feel as if they belong. No, it is you, mademoiselle, who are the perfect courtier of Versailles, you whom the others shall envy, once you go there and establish yourself. My father feels himself slipping down, sees his family losing its wealth, its influence. He throws a rope up, hoping that someone on higher and firmer ground will snatch it out of the air and pull him to safety - and that someone is you, mademoiselle. — Neal Stephenson

If you ask what you are going to do about global warming, the only rational answer is to change the way in which we do transportation, energy production, agriculture and a good deal of manufacturing. The problem originates in human activity in the form of the production of goods. — Barry Commoner

If the Reds see her, a Silver by blood but Red by nature, raised up with us, they can be placated. It's like an old fairy tale, a commoner becoming the princess. She's their champion. They can look to her instead of terrorists." And then, softer, but more important than anything else: "She's a distraction. — Victoria Aveyard

In certain ways, I'm not very different than I was when I was a teenager. — Barry Commoner

Technologists practice faith too; 'Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.' — Barry Commoner

The wave of new productive enterprises would provide opportunities to remedy the unjust distribution of environmental hazards among economic classes and racial and ethnic communities. — Barry Commoner

In nature, no organic substance is synthesized unless there is provision for its degradation; recycling is enforced. — Barry Commoner

The environmental crisis is somber evidence of an insidious fraud hidden in the vaunted productivity and wealth of modern, technology-based society. This wealth has been gained by rapid short-term exploitation of the environmental system, but it has blindly accumulated a debt to nature-a debt so large and so pervasive that in the next generation it may, if unpaid, wipe out most of the wealth it has gained us. — Barry Commoner

The favorite statistic is that the U.S. contains 6 to 7% of the world population but consumes more than half the world's resources and is responsible for that fraction of the total environmental pollution. But this statistic hides another vital fact: that not everyone in the U.S. is so affluent. — Barry Commoner

The most meaningful engine of change, powerful enough to confront corporate power, may be not so much environmental quality, as the economic development and growth associated with the effort to improve it. — Barry Commoner

By almost every account he's a fine young man. I'm simply trying to figure out why I should care that he's three centimeters taller than he was in May. — John Burnham Schwartz

The methods that EPA introduced after 1970 to reduce air-pollutant emissions worked for a while, but over time have become progressively less effective. — Barry Commoner

Money is far commoner than time. When one reflects, one perceives that money is just about the commonest thing there is. — Arnold Bennett

By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature; formal qualities will be neglected or actually despised. The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost always strong and bold. Writers will be more anxious to work quickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigor of thought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than to please, and to stir passions rather than to charm taste. — Alexis De Tocqueville

It seemed to him as if he were beholding in a magic panorama a future where he himself was sliding into that pleasureless yielding to the small solicitations of circumstance, which is a commoner history of perdition than any single momentous bargain. — George Eliot

Brace and be brisk,
commoner, carry your heart like an egg
on a spoon, be fleet through the concourse, primed
for that point in time when the world goes bust — Simon Armitage

In every case, the environmental hazards were made known only by independent scientists, who were often bitterly opposed by the corporations responsible for the hazards. — Barry Commoner

It's one of the greatest mistakes of cultivated people to take it as given that because they have sophisticated minds they also have sophisticated emotions. But what kind of soul feels sophisticated hatred or sophisticated grief, for, say, a murdered child? Is the broken heart of the educated and refined person different from that of the savage? Why not say that the enlightened and knowledgeable feel the pain of childbirth, or the kidney stone, in a different way to unpolished commoner or chav? Intelligence has many shades, but rage is the same color everywhere. Humiliation tastes the same to everyone. — Paul Hoffman

Air pollution is not merely a nuisance and a threat to health. It is a reminder that our most celebrated technological achievements-the automobile, the jet plane, the power plant, industry in general, and indeed the modern city itself-are, in the environment, failures. — Barry Commoner

Recycling is a good thing to do. It makes people feel good to do it. The thing I want to emphasize is the vast difference between recycling for the purpose of feeling good and recycling for the purpose of solving the trash problem. — Barry Commoner

When I worked in a second-hand bookshop - so easily pictured, if you don't work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally among calf-bound folios - the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people. Our shop had an exceptionally interesting stock, yet I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one. First edition snobs were much commoner than lovers of literature, but oriental students haggling over cheap textbooks were commoner still, and vague-minded women looking for birthday presents for their nephews were commonest of all. — George Orwell

Finally, since human beings are uniquely capable of producing materials not found in nature, environmental degradation may be due to the resultant intrusion into an ecosystem of a substance wholly foreign to it. — Barry Commoner

The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else. — Barry Commoner

The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists. — Barry Commoner

Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline - which prevented it from entering the environment. — Barry Commoner

Cussing like a commoner wasn't something I was tested on. I picked that habit up outside of high school. — S.A. Tawks

Mamata Banerjee is just a casual worker, just like a commoner. — Mamata Banerjee

What the new fertilizer technology has accomplished for the farmer is clear: more crop can be produced on less acreage than before. Since the cost of fertilizer, relative to the resultant gain in crop sales, is lower than that of any other economic input, and since the Land Bank pays the farmer for acreage not in crops, the new technology pays him well. The cost-in environmental degradation-is borne by his neighbors in town who find their water polluted. The new technology is an economic success-but only because it is an ecological failure. — Barry Commoner

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy. — Samuel Butler

If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one. — Barry Commoner

Emperor, king, general, duke," he whispered to himself. "These are just labels. Climb up the family tree of any of them high enough and you'll find a commoner who dared to take a chance. — Ken Liu

There is nothing like oratory, it is a skill that can turn a commoner into a king. — Winston Churchill

The clergy were to pray for all men, the knight to fight for them, and the commoner to work that all might eat. — Barbara W. Tuchman

I am a fellow commoner at Lucy Cavendish College. My husband used to be a lecturer at Leeds University, and we lived in Yorkshire for 11 years. When he gave up his job, we realised we could live wherever we liked. — Sophie Hannah

What is new is that environmentalism intensely illuminates the need to confront the corporate domain at its most powerful and guarded point - the exclusive right to govern the systems of production. — Barry Commoner

Oh, dear spirits below, this is the best thing that I have ever been privy to. Lord Ackerly shadowed a commoner from the colonies! — Kiersten White

The environmental crisis arises from a fundamental fault: our systems of production - in industry, agriculture, energy and transportation - essential as they are, make people sick and die. — Barry Commoner

I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It's irrational. — Barry Commoner

There are ever two ways of striving to fill one's place in the world: one is by seeking to prove one's self useful; the other, by striving to render one's self useless. The first way is the commoner and the more attractive; the second is the rarer and more noble. — Henry Clay Trumbull

The major source of photochemical smog - petroleum-fueled vehicles - can be replaced by emission-free electric vehicles. — Barry Commoner

She imagined him leaning against the shuttle, entertaining thoughts of scolding her for dressing like a ragged commoner. Never mind that her present outfit was light years ahead in comfort.

(Actually, he's wishing he had been less critical of you earlier. He feels bad that you won't acknowledge his presence, and he blames himself.)

(Quit it, Ian. I'm not going to feel sorry for him.)

She caught her protector's shrewd grin, highlighted by the fire's glow. (You already do, Queenie.)

(This talent of yours is really annoying.)

He leaned close to her ear and whispered, "That's not what you thought earlier when you wanted to get ahold of Efren."

"One tiny rosebud in a handful of thorns," she retorted. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Darona's face bore the pinched, taut look and shadowed eyes of someone constantly in pain, but the lack of lines suggested she was younger than Jesral had first thought; middle-aged, fifty at the very most.
'You make an uncommonly fine looking noblewoman, for a Mhrydaineg commoner.'
'Thank you.' Jesral was careful to keep all tone out of her voice. Darona gave her a shrewd stare, then a slight smile.
'Self-control. Good. You must ignore me when I offend you unintentionally. They say that pain can make one waspish, but my brothers and son tell me there's been no change in my manner. I was acid-tongued long before this set in,' she held up a knotted hand, 'and taking devil's claw root has no effect on that. Rest assured, young woman, when I intend offence people are in no doubt about it. — Helen Bell

said: 'Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils, - nor the human race, as I believe, - and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.' Such was the thought, my dear Glaucon, which I would fain have uttered if it had not seemed too extravagant; for to be convinced that in no other State can there be happiness private or public is indeed a hard thing. Socrates, — Plato

As the earth spins through space, a view from above the North Pole would encompass most of the wealth of the world - most of its food, productive machines, doctors, engineers and teachers. A view from the opposite pole would encompass most of the world's poor. — Barry Commoner

What I have experienced over time is that environmental problems are easier to deal with in ways that don't go into their interconnections to the rest of what we are. — Barry Commoner

But they must be sorry folk to bow down to the rich in such a fashion," said big John. "I am but a poor commoner of England myself, and yet I know something of charters, liberties franchises, usages, privileges, customs, and the like. If these be broken, then all men know that it is time to buy arrow-heads." "Aye, — Arthur Conan Doyle

Nothing ever goes away. — Barry Commoner

The AEC scientists were so narrowly focused on arming the United States for nuclear war that they failed to perceive facts - even widely known ones - that were outside their limited field of vision. — Barry Commoner

It reflects a prevailing myth that production technology is no more amenable to human judgment or social interests than the laws of thermodynamics, atomic structure or biological inheritance. — Barry Commoner

People talk about the horrors of war, but what weapon has a man invented that even approaches in cruelty some of the commoner diseases? 'Natural' death, almost by defintion, means something slow, smelly and painful. — George Orwell

For who could resist a woman who could fall from being queen to commoner and yet still carry herself as if greatness was within? — Philippa Gregory