Garrett Hardin's Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

You cannot do only one thing.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.

Incommensurables cannot be compared.

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

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.

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

The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.

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

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.

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.