119 Quotes by Elizabeth Kolbert

If control is the problem, then, by the logic of the Anthropocene, still more control must be the solution.

Here I was, trying to finish a book about the world spinning out of control, only to find the world spinning so far out of control that I couldn't finish the book.

I was struck, and not for the first time, by how much easier it is to ruin an ecosystem than to run one.

Wilson has observed, "We are not as gods. We're not yet sentient or intelligent enough to be much of anything." Paul Kingsnorth, a British writer and activist, has put it this way: "we are as gods, but we have failed to get good at it.. We are Loki, killing the beautiful for fun. We are Saturn, devouring our children... Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing something.

Somewhere in our DNA must lie the key mutation (or, more probably, mutations) that set us apart—the mutations that make us the sort of creature that could wipe out its nearest relative, then dig up its bones and reassemble its genome.

Walter [Alvarez] dubbed the formation the "Crater of Doom." It became more widely known, after the nearest town, as the Chicxulub crater.

...all that we consider to be the great works of man - the sculptures and the libraries, the monuments and the museums, the cities and the factories - will be compressed into a layer of sediment not much thicker than a cigarette paper.

The 'incredible frog hotel'—really a local bed and breakfast—...the frogs stay (in their tanks) in a block of rented rooms.

Amphibians—the word comes from the Greek meaning ‘double life.