Peter D. Ward > Quotes

“Ignorance is the enemy, curiosity the weapon of choice”
― Peter D. Ward

“I'm insignificant?" Geoff said, standing up from his rock. "I don't matter?" ... You see, because most people have an influence on the course of history, we can't ask them to do this job becasue we'd be interfering with the past. You, however, are so insignificant, that even if I were to kill you on the spot, history would remain completely unchanged.”
― Peter Ward

“Geoff stared into Eric's vacant eyes and thought seriously about going into a mad panic: the sort of panic where you pull your hair out, eat some of it, then run around the room with your pants on your head screaming like a girl.”
― Peter Ward

“The fact is that we live on a rapidly aging planet, and we will soon have but two choices if our species is to survive: engineer on a planetary scale or get off.”
― Peter D. Ward, The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive?

“to come as lodestones for the history we have”
― Peter Ward, A New History of Life: The Radical New Discoveries about the Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth

“Nobel laureate Christian de Duve stated that once the ingredients were in place with the right amount of energy present in the early Earth stove, life would have emerged from nonlife very quickly. Perhaps in minutes.”
― Peter D. Ward, A New History of Life: The Radical New Discoveries about the Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth

“The Phanerozoic Carbon Cycle”
― Peter D. Ward, The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive?

“While funerals are among the saddest events that we humans can participate in, at least they are definitive moments marking change: from living to dead. But perhaps even sadder is the life near its end, such as a human with a fatal malady given a highly definitive death sentence.”
― Peter D. Ward, A New History of Life: The Radical New Discoveries about the Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth