Noam Chomsky
Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
"The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know."
Population quotes
Population
670 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Michel Foucault
Philosopher, Social Theorist
"Are the prisons overpopulated, or is the population over-imprisoned ?"
Noam Chomsky
Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
"If you want to control a population... give them a God to worship."
Stephen Hawking
Theoretical Physicist
"In the last 200 years the population of our planet has grown exponentially, at a rate of 1.9% per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years, by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder."
Evan Davis
Journalist
"There is a strong link between the following three things: exporting, manufacturing and the degree of saving by the population. It's complicated, but if the population doesn't save, the economy will not tend to export as much, and if it doesn't export as much, it won't manufacture enough."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside population — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Population quotes (page 1 of 34)
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"Overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organise peace on this planet"
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"I’d like to see Manhattan underwater. I’d like to see when the human population plummets and there are no more high rises, because nobody’s buying them. I’m excited about that. Money and desire—all that is going to collapse, and wild green grasses are going to take over."
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"You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption."
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"An educated, enlightened & informed population is one of the surest ways of promoting the health of a democracy"
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"Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. ... We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode."
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"10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction."
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"If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full."
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"China is not only formidable, it is also aggressively building its own economic infrastructure. Just a few years from now, China will rival the U.S. and the European Union in global market power. It already has surpassed us in population."
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"But we are not going to be able to survive on this limited planet if the population keeps on growing: there isn't going to be anything left."
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"Excessive (population) growth may reduce output per worker, repress levels of living for the masses and engender strife"
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"Latest survey shows that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the world's population."
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"You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society."
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"All the blood is drained out of democracy - it dies - when only half the population votes."
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"We are literally eating the oceans alive and there are simply not enough fish to continue to feed an ever expanding population of humanity."
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"In order for a service to be social, you've really got to start from the ground up. The fact that almost a third of the U.S. population have even heard of Spotify is really because they've seen it on Facebook and friends have been sharing."
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"Does a population have informed consent when that population is not taught the inner workings of its monetary system, and then is drawn, all unknowing, into economic adventures?"
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"All it takes is one generation to brainwash a population and convince them that reality doesn't exist"
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"Im happy to be a part of the conversation, if more young people are talking about fracking instead of twerking were heading in the right direction. The people that govern us dont want an active population who are politically engaged, they want passive consumers distracted by the spectacle of which I accept I am a part."
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"Wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity: massacres have become vital."
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"The world population 60 years ago was just over 2 billion and it's now more than 6 billion. This huge increase - an explosion really - has probably done more harm to the environment than anything else."
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