What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance. – Henry Havelock Ellis

We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within. – Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man

Man — despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments — owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains. – Author and exact wording unknown, I’ve been told this was quoted by Paul H

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. – H.G. Wells, The Outline of History