Robert Buettner > Quotes

“Since the war, we're the only intelligent species left in the universe, therefore we think everything in this universe has to conform to our paradigm of what makes sense. Do you have any idea how arrogant that view is and on how little of this universe we base it?”
― Robert Buettner, Overkill

“The only animal capable of giving man a fair fight is man. Actually, among ourselves, we fight unfairest of all, and the more we practice, the nastier we get.”
― Robert Buettner, Overkill

“One human could simply withhold its feelings and intentions from another human by failing to audibilize or it could audibilize things that were not real. The other human would be aware only of what it heard and would change its behavior in response to a nonexistent stimulus. They called it 'lying.”
― Robert Buettner, Overkill

“Planetologist call it the conundrum of unforeseen ecological consequence. I call it the whack-a-mole rule of human meddling. She clasped both hands like a child hammering. WHACK! We change something here. Oops, that makes another problem pop up there where we didn't expect it. WHACK! So, we whack that mole. Oops! We're so smart that we're a menace.”
― Robert Buettner, Overkill

“People usually lived or died of dumb luck. Not because something mystical cares.”
― Robert Buettner, Overkill

“We crabbed shoulder to shoulder down cargo nets to our landing craft bucking in the Channel, each GI’s bilge-and-sea-soaked boots drenching his buddy below. In that moment I realized that we fight not for flags or against tyrants but for each other. For whatever remains of my life, those barely met strangers who dangled around me will be my only family. Strip away politics, and, wherever or whenever, war is an orphanage.—Anonymous letter fragment, Recovered on Omaha Beach, Normandy June 1944”
― Robert Buettner, Orphanage