Prince Philip Quotes

Short of nuclear war itself, population growth is the gravest issue the world faces. If we do not act, the problem will be solved by famine, riots, insurrection and war.

One always returns to the fact that there are just too many of us, the population continues to rise and it's unsustainable.

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

When it comes to the population explosion, there are two questions on the table. One, is our population growth going to kill us all? And two, is there any ethical way to prevent that from happening?

The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.

The key to understanding overpopulation is not population density but the numbers of people in an area relative to its resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities; that is, to the area’s carrying capacity. When is an area overpopulated? When its population can’t be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources.... By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated

I generally avoid over-population arguments. But there's no question we're in population overshoot. The catch is we're not going to do anything about it. There will be no policy. The usual suspects: starvation, war, disease, will drive the population down. There's little more to say about that really, and it's certainly an unappetizing discussion, but it's probably the truth. In any case, we're in overshoot and we face vast resource scarcities.

Family planning is the only exit point of the land problem. No other solution is possible.

The best "gift" anyone can give to humankind is to remain birth-free. It is a SIN for any person to birth while earth births exceed deaths. For what purpose would the world need more than 50,000 new Homo sapiens every year?

Can you name an environmental problem that would NOT be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder (and ultimately impossible) with more? Nobody can.

In my Nobel lecture, I suggested we had until the year 2000 to tame the population monster, and then food shortages would take us under. Now I believe we have a little longer.

Over-population is a phenomenon connected with the survival of the unfit, and it is a mechanism which has created conditions favourable to the survival of the unfit and the elimination of the fit.

It is a simple logic truth that, short of mass emigration into space, with rockets taking off at the rate of several million per second, uncontrolled birth-rates are bound to lead to horribly increased death –rates. It is hard to believe that this simple truth is not understood by those leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods. They express a preference for ‘natural’ methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation.

We think there is an ecological problem, but the real problem is irresponsible growth of human population.

To bring about destruction by overcrowding, mass starvation, anarchy, the destruction of our most cherished values, there is no need to do anything. We need only do nothing except what comes naturally, and breed. And how easy it is to do nothing

Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage.

Politically it would be terribly repressive to prevent people from having as many children as they want. But something's got to prevent it; and it won't be pleasant... We're still behaving in ways that have become disastrous... I don't think this helps us to survive... We're very species-centric... and now exist at the expense of every other form of life on Earth.

We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place.

I support population control. I think USA should do the same.

I think I can allow myself one child - and from then on, I think I would have to adopt. It makes sense not to add to the population problem.

Still, whether we like it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease of the human population becomes increasingly urgent.

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

I've been working a lot with Dick Smith on overpopulation.

To ensure a healthier and more abundant world, we simply must slow the world’s explosive growth in population.