Human Settlement Quotes

I would like to die on Mars, just not on impact.

History is all explained by geography.

The first Care in building of Cities, is to make them airy and well perflated; infectious Distempers must necessarily be propagated amongst Mankind living close together.

There are areas of the Earth that I would absolutely think no one lived in based on daytime observations. But then at night, lights pop up in those areas.

Although mountains may guide migrations, the plains are the regions where people dwell in greatest numbers.

We maintain that it is a right of humanity … that this vast territory be inhabited by an industrious people.

The test of civilization is the power of drawing the most benefit out of cities.

Mars is key to humanity's future in space. It is the closest planet that has all the resources needed to support life and technological civilization. Its complexity uniquely demands the skills of human explorers, who will pave the way for human settlers.

Incontestably, the great centres of population in the primeval ages were the chalklands, and next to them those of limestone. The chalk first, for it furnished man with flints, and the limestone next when he had learned to barter.

We should not be living in human communities that enclose tiny preserved ecosystems within them. Human communities should be maintained in small population enclaves within linked wilderness ecosystems. No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas. Communication systems can link the communities.

The space program needs a goal, and the goal should be humans to Mars.

Civilization is the art of living in towns of such size that everyone does not know everyone else

Again and again, to be sure, on the way to America, and under many other circumstances, man has passed through the most adverse climates and has survived, but he has flourished and waxed strong only in certain zones.

I hate nature. I really do. Nature is composed entirely of sticks, dirt, fall-down places, biting and stinging things, and savageries too numerous to list. And I'm not the only one who feels this way. Man has been building cities since the year oughty-ought, just to get away from this stuff.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience..... To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

I think there would be no shortage of applicants to the government astronaut corps to be settlers on the planet Mars. And I think this would be very inspiring.

We need to spread out now in the universe. I think in 100 years we'll be living on other planets.

Cities are natural, that's why they're everywhere. It's not like there's only one city, and everybody's like 'What the f**k is this?' No, cities are all over the place. They're natural. You know what's not natural? You, in the middle of the mountains, in the middle of the winter.

It's vital as we postulate and work toward exploration and human settlement beyond Earth. I like to think of the possibilities of sustaining humanity's continuum, with preserved recorded history way beyond the life of our Sun.

Being able to have a laboratory on Mars, being able to have some sort of sustained human presence on Mars in the future, I think, is critically important for science.

When we became sedentary, lived indoors, and started to raise livestock, we began to see wolves not as occasional fur-bearers or fellow hunters but as robbers.

God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.

The first credible humans-to-Mars plans are starting to weave together in public-private partnerships. In fact, I can say with some authority that this will also be the case in terms of the Moon and asteroids as well.

There are people who would love to spend their last ten years, or five years, or whatever it is, on the surface of Mars.

The largest single step in the ascent of man is the change from nomad to village agriculture.