Decimation Quotes & Sayings

The decimation of Lebanon was showing up in Chicago as a series of restaurants and little shops, just as the destruction of Vietnam had been visible here a decade earlier. If you never read the news but ate out a lot you should be able to tell who was getting beaten up around the world. — Sara Paretsky

Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation. — Christopher Hitchens

I was her decimation. She is my salvation. — D.H. Sidebottom

The expansion of this country was accomplished at the cost of decimation to the Native American population. The American Indian death toll due to the United States' march to the Pacific was massive. Much of the land we stole from the Native Americans is uninhabited to this day; basically, the Indians could have stayed where they were. Had America expanded its boundaries yet been true to its conscience, the American Indian nations could have remained intact. And were there a greater prevalence of Native American philosophy and culture in the United States today, the life of our nation would be immeasurably enriched. — Marianne Williamson

I get satisfaction out of seeing stuff that makes real change in the real world. We need a lot more of that and a lot less abstract stuff. — Temple Grandin

first mention of Israel, as a race, comes in the victory stele, or monument, of the Pharaoh Merneptah, dated 1207 BC. Recording an invasion of Canaan and the decimation of the tribes of that region, the inscription declares that 'Israel's seed is not', after his army had finished with them. The verse reads: The princes are prostrate, saying "Mercy!" Not one raises his head among the Nine Bows. Desolation is for Tehenu; Hatti is pacified; Plundered is Canaan with every evil; Carried off is Ashkelon; seized upon is Gezer; — Ian Carroll

South America had been an island continent, far bigger and far more diverse than Australia, for tens of millions of years before the Isthmus of Panama rose just a couple of million years ago. The resulting flood of North American mammals across the new land bridge corresponds in time with the decimation of the native South American fauna. In fact, most large mammals generally considered distinctly South American ... are all recent migrants from North America. — Stephen Jay Gould

Infidelity, cheating is the easiest, stupidest, dumbest thing you can do. — Joy Browne

The Caribbean is such an apocalyptic place, whether it's the decimation of the indigenous populations by the Europeans, whether it's the importation of slaves and their subsequent being worked to death by the millions in many ways, whether it's the immigrant processes which began for many people, new worlds ending their old ones. — Junot Diaz

The history of life is a tale of decimation and later stabilization of few surviving anatomies, not a story of steady expansion and progress. — Stephen Jay Gould

And that's what I wanted: obliteration. Decimation. Just an instant smear of me right out of all this rising and falling and nothing changing that feels like living. — Andre Dubus III

other organisms are doing quite well. Rats and cockroaches, for example, are in their heyday. These tenacious creatures would probably creep out from beneath the smoking rubble of a nuclear Armageddon, ready and able to spread their DNA. Perhaps 65 million years from now, intelligent rats will look back gratefully on the decimation wrought by humankind, just as we today can thank that dinosaur-busting asteroid. — Yuval Noah Harari

You do not know what you will earn tomorrow. — Luqman

Kat." He uttered my name like it was some kind of prayer, and then he pressed a kiss against the skin behind my ear. "I broke every rule of my kind to heal you and keep you with me. I ... burned down an entire city to keep you safe. I've killed for you. Did you think I'd forget what you mean to me? That anything in this world - in any world - would be stronger than my love for you? — Jennifer L. Armentrout

When all is complete deep in the teapot, when tea, mint, and sugar have completely diffused throughout the water, coloring and saturating it ... then a glass will be filled and poured back into the mixture, blending it further. The comes waiting. Motionless waiting. Finally, from high up, like some green cataract whose sight and sound mesmerize, the tea will once again cascade into a glass. Now it can be drunk, dreamily, forehead bowed, fingers held wide away from the scalding glass. — Simonne Jacquemard

The idea of decimation as a lottery converts the new iconography of the Burgess Shale into a radical view about the pathways of life and the nature of history ... May our poor and improbable species find joy in its new-found fragility and good fortune! Wouldn't anyone with the slightest sense of adventure, or the most weakly flickering respect for intellect, gladly exchange the old cosmic comfort for a look at something so weird and wonderful - yet so real - as *Opabinia*? — Stephen Jay Gould

These changes occurred just as the Spanish conquest of the Caribbean islands and the Portuguese settlement of the Brazilian subcontinent was getting under way and thus opened the American market for African slaves. The decimation of the native Arawak and Carib peoples in the Caribbean islands, the first major zone of European settlement, especially encouraged the early experimentation with African slave labor. — Herbert S. Klein