“As a word, ecology has been so debased by recent political usage that many people employ it to identify anything good that happens far from cities and without human interference.”

"Exultation and Explanation", p. 183
An Urchin in the Storm (1987)

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Stephen Jay Gould 274
American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

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“Since the political struggles of France, Italy, Spain, and Greece, the word patriotism has been employed, throughout continental Europe, to express a love of the public good; a preference for the interests of the many to those of the few; a desire for the emancipation of the human race from the thrall of despotism, religious and of the human race from the thrall of despotism, religious and civil; in short, patriotism there is used rather to express the interest felt in the human race in general, than that felt for any country, or inhabitants of a country, in particular. And patriot, in like manner, is employed to signify a lover of human liberty and human improvement, rather than a mere lover of the country in which he lives, or the tribe to which he belongs. Used in this sense, patriotism is a virtue, and a patriot a virtuous man.”

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