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At the beginning of the 20th century, there were less than 3 billion people on the earth, closer to 2 billion. By all measures that we can come up with right now,. with the lifestyle and consumption pattern of the Western industrial civilization, we can probably sustain about 2 billion people on this earth. We already have over 6 billion. China and India are aspiring to come on as industrial nations, aspiring to the lifestyle of the Western world, and it simply can't happen.
Edgar MitchellHow is it possible that a process can be democratic when it comes by way of money? If there is money then it can be elected a senator, it can be elected a representative. Do you know how much it cost to be elected president of the United States? The amount has reached, billions of dollars, 2 billion, 3 billion, 4 billion dollars, that's how much a presidential campaign costs. How much does a senatorial campaign cost? It costs 80 to 90 million dollars; or the campaign of a representative, 40 to 50 million. Is that really a democracy?
Alejandro Castro EspinI think that they hoped the private sector would come in. And the private sector tried to come in until they saw the size of the problem. I mean, from were people on that weekend that thought they'd had a solution. And then the hole kept getting bigger and bigger. And all of a sudden became apparent that 20 billion wouldn't do it and 30 billion wouldn't do it and 40 billion wouldn't do it. So it got beyond anybody's ability to certainly to do it in a short period of time.
Warren BuffettAmericans spend about 6 billion hours a year collecting the data and filling out the forms. We spend $10 billion to H&R Block and other preparers. And on top of that, $2 billion in tax preparation software, which still takes hours of work. It's outrageous the burden we put on people, and guess what, you go to Europe, you go to Japan, it's 15 minutes and costs nothing.
T.R. ReidUS Airways made an $8 billion bid for Delta, including $4 billion in cash and $4 billion in lost luggage.
Andy BorowitzI think the Space Shuttle is worth one billion dollars a launch. I think that it is worth two billion dollars for what it does. I think the Shuttle is worth it for the work it does.
Pete ConradThis is not some alarmist Orwellian scenario; it is here, now, financed by $20 billion last year and $15 billion more this year of federal money appropriated out of sheer fear. By creating the means to monitor 300 million visits to the United States yearly, this administration and a supine opposition are building a system capable of identifying, tracking and spying on 300 million Americans.
William SafireWe have the opportunity now to look at the two billion people in the world who suffer from the most abject poverty, hunger, disease, and devastation. Add to that another two billion people who are just plain poor. If you look into the world of those caught in economic oppression, illiteracy, disease, and sexism, then you'll understand more clearly what we have to do.
Harry BelafonteDoes it sound outrageous to you that military spending for fiscal year 2000 will be almost $290 billion and all other domestic discretionary spending, such as education, job training, housing, Amtrak, medical research, environment, Head Start and many other worthwhile programs will total $246 billion, the biggest disparity in modern times ?
Dale BumpersWe are in front of a global scandal of around one billion - one billion people who still suffer from hunger today. We cannot look the other way and pretend this does not exist. The food available in the world is enough to feed everyone.
Pope FrancisThe country doesn't owe you anything because you're an American or especially because you have a college degree. Now, if you think... If you are a college student and you've got a degree and you're out there and you can't find a job and if you think - if you agree with Obama that the Bush tax cuts ought to sunset - $700 billion ought to be taken out of the private sector and sent to Obama, then you deserve to be out of work for the rest of your life because that $700 billion taken out of the private sector could be used to grow businesses and hire people.
Rush LimbaughWe're approaching being able to do a billion billion calculations per second, and that's the - that's the objective of our national labs. We're still not there. But with hundreds of millions of calculations per second.
Joe BidenOne such troubling provision is a tax increase to pay for the $635 billion included in the budget for health care 'reserve funds.' Health care reform is desperately needed in America, but I'm concerned that $635 billion will be a down payment on socialized medicine, causing the impersonal rationing of health care and destroying the doctor-patient relationship.
Paul BrounWhen you factor in population growth, it's clear that the mobility model that we have today simply will not work tomorrow. Four billion clean cars on the road are still four billion cars, and a traffic jam with no emissions is still a traffic jam.
Bill FordDuring the fiscal year ending in 1861, expenses of the federal government had been $67 million. After the first year of armed conflict they were $475 million and, by 1865, had risen to one billion, three-hundred million dollars. On the income side of the ledger, taxes covered only about eleven per cent of that figure. By the end of the war, the deficit had risen to $2.61 billion. That money had to come from somewhere.
G. Edward GriffinThroughout all of human history we have consumed the natural world. All creatures do. Birds do. Fish do. Earthworms do. We consume the natural world as a source of our survival. But no creature has ever consumed at the scale that humans have, and now there are seven billion of us. I think the good news is that a large percentage of those seven billion minds can work to make better decisions.
Sylvia EarleMost educated people are aware that we are the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sunโs demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.
Martin ReesFor all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.
Carl SaganTelephones are a virtual necessity - not a luxury - and the revenues collected by this tax flow into the general fund. But this once temporary tax remains and costs American taxpayers, our small businesses and families almost $6 billion dollars a year.
Mike FitzpatrickWhile alcohol ... continues to wreak havoc in America, supported by a $6 billion-a-year alcohol industry advertising campaign extolling the joy of inebriation, the far less harmful drug of marijuana remains illegal and continues to ruin people's lives - only if they are caught possessing and convicted of that crime.
Lawrence O'DonnellIn twentieth-century Old Earth, a fast food chain took dead cow meat, fried it in grease, added carcinogens, wrapped it in petroleum-based foam, and sold nine hundred billion units. Human beings. Go figure.
Dan SimmonsIf it takes several billion years to develop the building blocks which you need, like RNA and DNA, and then those can build multicellular life and then multicellular life can be honed with natural selection to a point where it becomes sentient like us, then at some point that sentient being can begin to manipulate the matter around it to build better sentient life.
Neill BlomkampThat's how they manage to live together, a billion of them, in reasonable peace. They are not perfect, of course. They know how to fight and lie and cheat each other, and all the things that all of us do. But more than any other people in the world, the Indians know how to love one another.
Gregory David RobertsYou got guys that are so old, you see them eating lunch, the drool's just coming from their mouth, and they're sending around memos about 10 percent crosscuts. If I had one tenth of their money, I would be free. They don't know what freedom is. It's a disease. You're one of the rare people that is given freedom, and what do you do with it? You don't live. You choose to be dead in life. Money buys freedom. I mean why is this guy with the slobber worried about taking food off other people's tables? His $19 billion won't get him from where he is to the grave comfortably? That to me is a disease.
Nick ToschesOrganic agriculture is more about fairness and respect than it is about parts-per-billion of pesticide residues
Jim Hightower...in just 25 years the glaciers in the Himalayas which provide water for three-quarters of a billion people could disappear entirely.
Gordon BrownThe reality is that there are half a billion kids in India, in villages, who have a pre-determined life. If they're very lucky and they're a gifted athlete, maybe they can compete for the Olympics, or maybe they can get into the military. But if you're not a gifted athlete, then you're going to end up working for your family and you're going to perpetuate what your family is. It's gotten to the point, in villages, where there's no hope. And the first spark of hope is when you ask yourself the question,"What gift did God give me that I can develop and use to better my life?"
J. B. BernsteinThe eternal duel between Ormuzd and Ahriman, God and Satan, is raging in my breast, which is one among their billion battlefields.
Mahatma GandhiI have $100 billion... You realize I could spend $3 million a day, every day, for the next 100 years? And that's if I don't make another dime.
Bill GatesSize will hurt returns. Look at Berkshire Hathaway - the last five things Warren has done have generated returns that are splendid by historical standards, but now give him $100 billion in assets and measure outcomes across all of it, it doesn't look so good. We can only buy big positions, and the only time we can get big positions is during a horrible period of decline or stasis. That really doesn't happen very often.
Charlie MungerThere is one thing of which I can assure you. If good performance of the fund is even a minor objective, any portfolio encompassing one hundred stocks (whether the manager is handling one thousand dollars or one billion dollars) is not being operated logically. The addition of the one hundredth stock simply can't reduce the potential variance in portfolio performance sufficiently to compensate for the negative effect its inclusion has on the overall portfolio expectation.
Warren BuffettOne of the simplest ways to get an idea of one trillion dollars is to consider the amount in terms of the passage of time. One million seconds is equal to roughly eleven days and twelve hours, and one billion seconds is thirty-two years. One trillion seconds equals thirty-two thousand years.
Geoff DavisThe billion people who wake up every day trying to figure out if they have enough food to eat won't be at Davos.
Bill GatesThe observations that have developed over the years have given us perspective about where we fit in. We are newcomers, really recent arrivals on a planet that is four and a half billion years old.
Sylvia EarleHurricane Katrina, coupled with Hurricane Rita, which came promptly on Katrina's heels, claimed more than 1,200 American lives. Together, they caused more than $200 billion in damage.
Ellen TauscherSomeone is an ignoramus who would say that, 'Oh, we had three hurricanes this year. This proves that somehow the climate is warming.' The earth is 4.5 billion years old, and you're going to say that we had four hurricanes and so it proves a theory?
Rand PaulExpression, to a great extent, is a matter of terms, and terms are anyone's. The meaning of 'God' may have a billion interpretations if there be that many souls in the world
Charles IvesAs long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars.
Martin LutherIf you're someone who's making film or TV or music, or any kind of art form now, there's a billion outlets and they all have an opinion.
Andy SambergWhen I arrived on the planet, there were only two billion. Wildlife was more abundant, we were less so; now the situation is reversed.
Sylvia Earle[Chinese] are a huge empire now, you'll soon be - in a few years two billion people in the world. So, you should be more compassionate, more understanding. And above all, you don't need all their trouble.
Elie WieselThere are 400 billion stars out there, just in our galaxy alone. If just one out of a million of those had planets, and just one in a million of those had life, and just one out of a million of those had intelligent life, there would be literally millions of civilizations out there.
Jodie FosterHumanity, in the desperate attempt to fit 8 billion or more people on the planet and give them a higher standard of living, is at risk of pushing the rest of life off the globe.
E. O. WilsonIf you've got a billion dollars and you're ungrateful, you're a poor man. If you have very little but you're grateful for what you have, you're truly rich.
Tony RobbinsEven if you could use all the organic material that you have--the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues--and get them back on the soil, you couldn't feed more than 4 billion people. In addition, if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests.
Norman BorlaugAs the titanic losses were racking up, Fannie Mae's operators, Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick, disguised the catastrophe by orchestrating a $5 billion accounting fraud - all the while continuing to pressure banks to make absurd, politically correct loans and denouncing Republicans as enemies of the poor.
Ann Coulter1.5 billion people lack proper access to electricity. Many buy kerosene, which can cost 30 percent of their income. It sends millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. And often the lamp will fall over and catch the house on fire. So mothers hate it, but it's their only option.
Jacqueline Novogratz