Population Size Quotes & Sayings

People actually occupy around 3 per cent of the earth's land surface. If 1,200 square feet was given to every person in the world, they would still all fit into an area the size of Texas - whether the Texans would object is an altogether different issue! — Michael Coren

People are annoyed with the Chinese for not respecting more human rights. But with a population that size it's very difficult to have the same attitude to human rights. — Peter Ustinov

They want to control humankind through what they call selective breeding. The Nazis started it, but now the nwo are continuing it. See, the only way to control population is to first get it back down to manageable size. They're culling the herd, same way the game commission does when deer population gets out of control. That's why we've got diseases like cancer and aids. You telling me that we can put a little goddamn skateboard-looking robot on Mars and have it send pictures back, but we can't find a cure for cancer? There's a cure. You can bet on that, boys. There's a goddamn cure. They just won't release it because cancer helps cut down the population. — Brian Keene

We must not put pressure on people, but by providing information on the population and the environments, and appropriate contraception for everyone ... doctors should help bring family size into the arena of environmental ethics, analogous to avoiding patio heaters and high carbon cars. — John Guillebaud

Environmentalists have been outspoken in their support of smaller family size and abortion rights as keys to reducing global warming. But when it comes to immigration, the single biggest contributor to population growth in the industrial world, they stand largely silent. — Gary Bauer

Although population and consumption are societal issues, technology is the business of business. If economic activity must increase tenfold over what it is today to support a population nearly double its current size, then technology will have to reduce its impact twenty-fold merely to keep the planet at its current levels of environmental impact. For example, to stabilize the climate we may have to reduce real carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent, while simultaneously growing the world economy by an order of magnitude. — Stuart L. Hart

So when one adjusts for population size, the availability bias, and historical myopia, it is far from clear that the 20th century was the bloodiest in history. Sweeping that dogma out of the way is the first step in understanding the historical trajectory of war. — Steven Pinker

I don't claim to have any special interest in natural history, but as a boy I was made aware of the annual fluctuations in the number of game animals and the need to adjust the cull to the size of the surplus population. — Prince Philip

The number of people with HIV receiving Medicare benefits has grown over time, reflecting growth in the size of the of the HIV positive population in the U.S. but also an increased lifespan for people with HIV due to antiretroviral medicines and other treatment advances. — David Mixner

I cannot in good conscience vote in favor of tax cuts, irrespective of their size, or to which segment of the population they are targeted, ... Nor can I support any spending increases that are not related to improving our nation's defense from the obvious and serious threats facing us today. — John McCain

This seems counterintuitive, but turns out that as infant mortality is reduced, population sizes also decrease, because parents don't need to anticipate that their babies are going to die. — Jane Chen

Although reducing human emissions to the atmosphere is undoubtedly of critical importance, as are any and all measures to reduce the human environmental "footprint", the truth is that the contribution of each individual cannot be reduced to zero ... if we believe that the size of the human "footprint" is a serious problem (and there is much evidence for this) then a rational view would be that along with a raft of measures to reduce the footprint per person, the issue of population management must be addressed — Chris Rapley

Nor do the females of our closest primate cousins offer much reason to believe the human female should be sexually reluctant due to purely biological concerns. Instead, primatologist Meredith Small has noted that female primates are highly attracted to novelty in mating. Unfamiliar males appear to attract females more than known males with any other characteristic a male might offer (high status, large size, coloration, frequent grooming, hairy chest, gold chains, pinky ring, whatever). Small writes, "The only consistent interest seen among the general primate population is an interest in novelty and variety ... In fact," she reports, "the search for the unfamiliar is documented as a female preference more often than is any other characteristic our human eyes can perceive. — Christopher Ryan

Switzerland is two times the size of the state of New Jersey, which has, by far, the larger population. Yet there are nearly a million men in the Swiss Army. It's a civilian army, a trained and practiced militia, ready to mobilize instantly. Each citizen serves for thirty years. But all of them, a million of them, mind, are ready to grab their rifles and be present at mobilization points and battle stations all over the country. Within twenty-four hours. — Ted Bell

In the next chapters I will deal with factors that have helped make this happen, including better leaders, a revival of African entrepreneurship, the return of the great diaspora and a hungry, innovative young population - the largest demographic of young people in the world. But I will start with what I believe has been the most important factor of all. Despite Africa's size and the great drama of her story - colonialism, war, famine, disease, dictatorship, corruption, hundreds of billions of dollars in wasted aid - it is astonishing to me that the thing that has probably helped us more than anything else is a tiny little device that can fit in your pocket. It's called a cell phone - and it's been a game changer. — Ashish J. Thakkar

The shift in national power may be overshadowed by an even more fundamental shift in the nature of power. Enabled by communications technologies, power will shift toward multifaceted and amorphous networks that will form to influence state and global actions. Those countries with some of the strongest fundamentals - GDP, population size, etc. - will not be able to punch their weight unless they also learn to operate in networks and coalitions in a multipolar world. — National Research Council

The smaller the sample size, the more likely that it is unrepresentative of the wider population..."people can be taught the correct rule, perhaps even with little difficulty. The point remains that people do not follow the correct rule, when left to their own devices. — Michael Lewis

The United Nations would probably have to rest on two pillars: one constituted by an assembly of equal executive representatives of individual countries, resembling the present plenary, and the other consisting of a group elected directly by the globe's population in which the number of delegates representing individual nations would, thus, roughly correspond to the size of the nations. — Vaclav Havel

The density of settlement of economists over the whole empire of economic science is very uneven, with a few areas of modest size holding the bulk of the population. — Herbert A. Simon

Australia is the same size as the U.S., but it's much smaller in terms of population. I've been working in the States off and on since the '80s, and the first time I played a lead here was in '91, I think. — Robert Taylor

Measurement aside, there are two reasons aggregate growth might matter. The first is to create jobs to assimilate the unemployed and anticipate increases in population. The second is to improve living standards. Economic logic does not require overall expansion to achieve either of these objectives. An expanding labour force can be accommodated if hours of work fall. And it's productivity growth, rather than the overall size of the economy, that drives improvements in living standards. Getting bigger doesn't necessarily yield wealth; improving productivity does. — Juliet Schor

The standard of living has risen along with the size of the world's population since the beginning of recorded time. There is no convincing economic reason why these trends toward a better life should not continue indefinitely. — Julian Simon

In view of the vast size of the occupied areas in the East the forces available for establishing security in these areas will be sufficient only if all resistance is punished not by legal prosecution of the guilty but by the spreading of such terror by the occupying power as is appropriate to eradicate every inclination to resist among the population. The competent commanders must find the means of keeping order not by demanding more security forces but by applying suitable Draconian methods. — Alfred Jodl

California and Italy are about the same size. Roughly speaking, California contains about 150,000 square miles, Italy about 120,000 square miles. They are not dissimilar in physical characteristics. They extend over a long distance from north to south, and each has an extensive coastline. Each is destitute of coal mines. Each produces large quantities of wheat. Each produces citrus and other fruits, olives, wine, and raisins. The climate is about the same, although California's is superior. They are in about the same zone. Rome lies in about the same latitude as San Francisco. Our state is one of the richest and most fertile of all the United States. Yet suppose that California were as populous as Italy - someday it will be. Suppose it had a population of millions. Could California, even with its vast resources, support an army of a quarter of a million men as Italy does? She could do it only as Italy does, by grinding the people into the dust with oppressive taxation. — Jerome Hart

It is your mind that matters economically, as much or more than your mouth or hands. In the long run, the most important economic effect of population size and growth is the contribution of additional people to our stock of useful knowledge. And this contribution is large enough in the long run to overcome all the costs of population growth. — Julian Simon

The author finds any freaking, and remarkably objective, way to estimate religion's influence on American society before the Civil War. The population closely aligned with evangelical sympathies was three or four times the size of the voting population in 1860 — Mark A. Noll

Therefore, according to the Bible, the essence of a city was not the population's size but its density. A city is a social form in which people physically live in close proximity to one another. — Timothy Keller

Because of its sheer size and population, China is on a collision course with the planet. The country's oil use has doubled in the last ten years, and if the Chinese by 2030 use oil at the same rate as Americans do now, China will need 100 million barrels of oil a day. However, current world production is only around 80 million barrels per day, and is unlikely to rise much further before the 'peak oil' point is reached. There simply isn't enough oil in the ground to bring Chinese consumption up to Western levels-the global resource buffer is already being hit. — Mark Lynas

There's no point bleating about the future of pandas, polar bears and tigers when we're not addressing the one single factor that's putting more pressure on the ecosystem than any other, namely the ever-increasing size of the world's population — Chris Packham

Their most telling improvement involved a fundamental parameter: population size of the hosts. — David Quammen

Like the monks chanting their Pali mantras, learning by rote was the accepted method of education just as in English schools of the time. 'In geography,' Sokheang recalled, 'we would have to learn the size of a country, the population, the agricultural produce, etcetera. And we would get called up to recite it to the rest of the class.' The accuracy of this recitation was the measure of a successful student. 'Knowledge,' said Sokheang, 'was the storage of facts. — Nic Dunlop

Human beings, because we're so clever, have removed every single one of those population limiting factors ... So nothing controls our increase in numbers except our own wish. Since I first started making television programs, the population of the world has increased three times. That's an extraordinary notion. Can it increase four times? Can it increase five times? The Earth is a finite size. So a point will eventually come when we run out of food, when we run out of space and when we will have destroyed most of the natural world. So ought we to do something about it before that happens? — David Attenborough

There has always been quite a strong black and white art tradition in Australia, with quite a large contingent of cartoonists, given the size of the population. — Pat Oliphant

Whether we accept it or not, this will likely be the century that determines what the optimal human population is for our planet. It will come about in one of two ways:
Either we decide to manage our own numbers, to avoid a collision of every line on civilization's graph - or nature will do it for us, in the form of famines, thirst, climate chaos, crashing ecosystems, opportunistic disease, and wars over dwindling resources that finally cut us down to size. — Alan Weisman

As far as population size goes, big is no longer important, and it can even be a drawback. In fact, the future belongs more to second-tier cities. Any place can become a world-class center today by finding an area in which it outperforms others, by thinking for the long term, by expanding its competitive abilities and by operating globally. — Charles Landry

For a great state, qua state, is not one which embraces a great population or an extensive territory, but one which achieves a great intensity of social unity. And in this matter we must bear in mind that unity means unity of purpose and will, and not merely unity of action and result. One of the most significant reasons for refusing to attribute an unlimited degree of statehood to those associations which are legally known as states, is that their size is governed by considerations of commerce, mere whim, or by other limited ends, rather than by reference to the good life or the excellence of souls. — Michael Oakeshott

The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits. — John Holdren

The right way to deal with healthcare reform is not to have a one-size-fits-all plan that's imposed on all the states, but recognizing the differences between different states' populations, states should be able to craft their own plans to get all their citizens insured, and to make sure that preexisting conditions are covered. — Mitt Romney

Industrialized countries have disproportionately more cancers than countries with little or no industry (after adjusting for age and population size). One half of all the world's cancers occur in people living in industrialized countries, even though we are only one-fifth of the world's population. Closely tracking industrialization are breast cancer rates, which are highest in North America and northern Europe, intermediate in southern Europe and Latin America, and lowest in Asia and Africa. — Sandra Steingraber

An estimated 7 million illegal immigrants were residing in the United States in January 2000. This is double the size of the illegal immigrant population in January 1990 and constitutes 2.5 percent of the total U.S. population of just over 281 million. — Gary Miller

The most important benefit of population size and growth is the increase it brings to the stock of useful knowledge. Minds matter economically as much as, or more than, hands or mouths. — Julian Simon

The minute your group gets so big you don't know anybody in it and they don't know you, there's hell to pay. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

A state's potential power is based on the size of its population and the level of its wealth. — John Mearsheimer

As a child, I was always intrigued by the question: what is it that distinguishes a city from a town? Is it size? Population? Location? When I asked grown-ups, the confident answer was that a city has to have a cathedral - which, to a child raised in a devout Catholic setting, made sense. — John Burnside

The time has already come when each country needs a considered national policy about what size of population, whether larger or smaller than at present or the same, is most expedient. And having settled this policy, we must take steps to carry it into operation. The time may arrive a little later when the community as a whole must pay attention to the innate quality as well as to the mere numbers of its future members. — John Maynard Keynes

I actually did my research and tried to get kind of like a working visa for Australia. It always seemed like it was a land of opportunities. The same size as the United States with one-tenth of the population. — Rick Nielsen

When you scale by population size, only one of the 20th century's atrocities even makes the top ten. The worst atrocity of all time was the An Lushan Revolt and Civil War, an eight-year rebellion during China's Tang Dynasty that, according to censuses, resulted in the loss of two-thirds of the empire's population, a sixth of the world's population at the time.13 — Steven Pinker

Augustine says that you don't understand a nation by the throw weight of its military or the strength of its research universities or the size of its population, but by looking at what it loves in common. To assess a nation, you look at the health and strength of its ideals. And there's no question that the common love in America is freedom. — Os Guinness

The human population can no longer be allowed to grow in the same old uncontrollable way. If we do not take charge of our population size, then nature will do it for us and it is the poor people of the world who will suffer most — David Attenborough

The work directed against mosquitoes carrying yellow fever had an equally good effect upon malaria, especially when anti-anopheles work was extended to the suburbs of the city. Before the year 1901 Havana had yearly from 300 to 500 deaths from malaria, rising as high in 1898 as 1,900 deaths. Since 1901 there has been a steady decrease in the malaria death rate until 1912, when there were only four deaths. Four deaths from malaria in a city in the tropics the size of Havana, about 300,000 population, means the extinction of malaria in that city. — William Crawford Gorgas

No happiness without order, no order without authority, no authority without unity." The mildness of all government among them, civil or domestic, may be signalised by their idiomatic expressions for such terms as illegal or forbidden - viz., "It is requested not to do so and so." Poverty among the Ana is as unknown as crime; not that property is held in common, or that all are equals in the extent of their possessions or the size and luxury of their habitations: but there being no difference of rank or position between the grades of wealth or the choice of occupations, each pursues his own inclinations without creating envy or vying; some like a modest, some a more splendid kind of life; each makes himself happy in his own way. Owing to this absence of competition, and the limit placed on the population, it is difficult for a family to fall into distress; there are no hazardous speculations, no emulators striving for superior wealth and rank. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

My firm conviction is that if wide-spread Eugenic reforms are not adopted during the next hundred years or so, our Western Civilization is inevitably destined to such a slow and gradual decay as that which has been experienced in the past by every great ancient civilization. The size and the importance of the United States throws on you a special responsibility in your endeavours to safeguard the future of our race. Those who are attending your Congress will be aiding in this endeavour, and though you will gain no thanks from your own generation, posterity will, I believe, learn to realize the great dept it owes to all the workers in this field. — Leonard Darwin

As a small country, both in size and population, our future hinges on the quality of our people. — Hassanal Bolkiah

Either Stone Age man was a technological wizard, who carefully removed his technological achievements so as not to upset his inferior progeny, or our population dwindled from a once astronomical size to the mere three billions of today. — Heinz Von Foerster

It comes and it goes. But epidemiologists have recognized that, with measles virus, as with other pathogens, there's a critical minimum size of the host population, below which it can't persist indefinitely as an endemic, circulating infection. This is known as the critical community size (CCS), an important parameter in disease dynamics. — David Quammen