Gerald Durrell Quotes
All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.
Quotes to Explore
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Civilization is so hard on the body that some have called it a disease, despite the arts that keep puny bodies alive to a greater average age, and our greater protection from contagious and germ diseases.
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For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.
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Danger is ever-present in life, more for some than others.
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Human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away.
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It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to that automatism of technological civilization and the industrial-consumer society, for they too are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in post-totalitarian societies.
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The greatest danger of a terrorist's bomb is in the explosion of stupidity that it provokes.
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In Plato's republic, poets were considered subversive, a danger to the republic. I kind of relish that role. So I see my present role as a gadfly, to use my soapbox to promote my various ideas and obsesions.
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You can tell someone you love them first. You can try to speak only the truth for a whole week. You can jump out of an airplane or spend Christmas Day all by your lonesome. You can help people who need help and fight real bad guys. You can dance fast or take an improv class or do one of those Ironman things… Adventure and danger can be good for your heart and soul.
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You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, and wipe it clean of life - but if you desire to defend it, protect it,and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman Legions did - by putting your soldiers in the mud.
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I think women can save civilization.
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From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.
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The legalized liquor business is the tragedy of our civilization. Alcohol is the greatest and most blighting curse of our modern civilization. The liquor seller is simply and only a privileged malefactor - a criminal.
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There is far more danger in public than in private monopoly, for when Government goes into business it can always shift its losses to the taxpayers. Government never makes ends meetand that is the first requisite of business.
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We live in constant danger of coming apart. The mystery of why we do not always come apart is the animating tension of all art.
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I made one great mistake in my life-when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made but there was some justification-the danger that the Germans would make them.
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There are two things a real man likes - danger and play; and he likes woman because she is the most dangerous of play things.
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How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude.
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A heart full of courage and cheerfulness needs a little danger from time to time, or the world gets unbearable.
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I think there's a danger, for me at least, in retreating and going inward and depression. I have to stay diligent against that tendency.
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Civilization... is another word for respect for life. One can't have too much respect for a loveliness that's brittle as spun glass.
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Los Angeles was a place after my own heart. The people were hospitable. The country had the same attraction for me that it had for the Indians who originally chose this spot as their place to live. The Los Angeles River was a beautiful, limpid little stream, with willows on its banks. It was so attractive to me that it at once became something about which my whole scheme of life was woven, I loved it so much.
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We are all dietetic sinners; only a small percent of what we eat nourishes us; the balance goes to waste and loss of energy.
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I just got diagnosed with tendonitis which is such an insulting diagnosis. Just point to my shoulder and say "old."
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All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.
