Top 50 Garrett Hardin Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.”

— Garrett Hardin

2. “There is nothing more dangerous than a shallow thinking compassionate person.”

— Garrett Hardin

3. “The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.”

— Garrett Hardin

4. “Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”

— Garrett Hardin

5. “The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.”

— Garrett Hardin

6. “You can never do merely one thing. The law applies to any action that changes something in a complex system. The point is that an action taken to alleviate a problem will trigger several effects, some of which may offset or even negate the one intended.”

— Garrett Hardin

7. “Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.”

— Garrett Hardin

8. “Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity.”

— Garrett Hardin

9. “Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.”

— Garrett Hardin

10. “A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.”

— Garrett Hardin

11. “The greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically. At the very least, we should always seek another opinion.”

— Garrett Hardin

12. “Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed.”

— Garrett Hardin

13. “You cannot do only one thing.”

— Garrett Hardin

14. “No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.”

— Garrett Hardin

15. “Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.”

— Garrett Hardin

16. “Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.”

— Garrett Hardin

17. “An attack on values is inevitably seen as an act of subversion.”

— Garrett Hardin

18. “The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.”

— Garrett Hardin

19. “The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.”

— Garrett Hardin

20. “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else.”

— Garrett Hardin

21. “Every plausible policy must be followed by the question ‘And then what?’”

— Garrett Hardin

22. “The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.”

— Garrett Hardin

23. “A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.”

— Garrett Hardin

24. “Ecological differentiation is the necessary condition for coexistence.”

— Garrett Hardin

25. “In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable.”

— Garrett Hardin

26. “Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.”

— Garrett Hardin

27. “But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.”

— Garrett Hardin

28. “It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience.”

— Garrett Hardin

29. “The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them.”

— Garrett Hardin

30. “Never globalize a problem if it can possibly be dealt with locally.”

— Garrett Hardin

31. “It takes five years for a willing person’s mind to change. Have patience with yourself and others when treading in an area protected by a taboo.”

— Garrett Hardin

32. “We can’t cure a shortage by increasing the supply.”

— Garrett Hardin

33. “Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.”

— Garrett Hardin

34. “Natural selection favors the forces of psychological denial. The individual benefits as an individual from his ability to deny the truth even though society as a whole, of which he is a part, suffers. Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed.”

— Garrett Hardin

35. “In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world’s goods must steadily decrease.”

— Garrett Hardin

36. “Incommensurables cannot be compared.”

— Garrett Hardin

37. “The god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs from moping over their situation must also have created fundamentalists to keep rationalists from getting flabby. Let us be duly thankful for out blessings.”

— Garrett Hardin

38. “The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.”

— Garrett Hardin

39. “The only thing we can really count on in this uncertain world is human unreliability itself.”

— Garrett Hardin

40. “Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce; it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies.”

— Garrett Hardin

41. “We see only what we have names for.”

— Garrett Hardin

42. “A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.”

— Garrett Hardin

43. “Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.”

— Garrett Hardin

44. “Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.”

— Garrett Hardin

45. “Religious reasons, which is no reason. I notice Skeptic had a review of Dennett’s book, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. Religious reasons amount to what Dennett terms “skyhooks.” Do you believe in skyhooks? I don’t.”

— Garrett Hardin

46. “To say that we mutually agree to coercion is not to say that we are required to enjoy it, or even to pretend we enjoy it.”

— Garrett Hardin

47. “What features of your daily life do you expect to be improved by a further increase in population?”

— Garrett Hardin

48. “However, I think the major opposition to ecology has deeper roots than mere economics; ecology threatens widely held values so fundamental that they must be called religious.”

— Garrett Hardin

49. “In an approximate way, the logic of commons has been understood for a long time, perhaps since the discovery of agriculture or the invention of private property in real estate.”

— Garrett Hardin

50. “Every measured thing is part of a web of variables more richly interconnected than we know.”

— Garrett Hardin