Isaac Asimov Quotes
It's going to destroy it all. I use what I call my bathroom metaphor. If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have what I call freedom of the bathroom, go to the bathroom any time you want, and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And this to my way is ideal. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution. But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door … and so on. And in the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.
Isaac Asimov, 1910-1971, Scientist and Science Fiction Author, Interview, Bill Moyers' World Of Ideas, October 17, 1988
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In Burundi, family land is divided among the male children of a family. The average Burundian woman has 6.3 children, nearly triple the international fertility rate. With this fertility rate, the plots of land for each person inevitably get smaller and smaller over time. At 10,745 square miles, Burundi is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Maryland, but it holds nearly twice as many people: about 10 million. The small plots of land are inefficient to farm and provide subsistence. So the nation was in a crises as there was little industrialization and land was essential for existence for most Burundians. See {35808} and {35809}.
See {621143} for the situation even before the critical population is reached.
Despite the obvious benefits of family planning, there are a number of religious forces which see abortion and contraception as the same immoral act—the terminating of a life or potential life. This view is held by most clerics who are Orthodox Jews, Fundamentalist Protestants, Roman Catholics, and fundamentalist Muslims. The members of those religions however, do not always agree with their clergy. For example, the majority of American Catholics practice Birth Control as do many modern Muslims, most protestants and most Jews.
Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was known for his works of science fiction and popular science. Asimov was a prolific writer, and wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards.
