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The greatest shortcoming of the human race is man's inability to understand the exponential function.

— Albert Allen Bartlett

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More quotes by Albert Allen Bartlett

Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?"

We must realize that growth is but an adolescent phase of life that stops when physical maturity is reached. If growth continues after maturity, it is called obesity or cancer. Prescribing growth as the cure of the energy crisis has all the logic of prescribing gluttony as a remedy for obesity or prescribing cancer as the cure for carcinoma.

The Arithmetic of Energy Growth (1977)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Albert Allen Bartlett (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.