“The Aswan Dam, built at enormous expense to improve the lot of the Egyptian peasant, has caused the Nile to deposit its fertilizing sediment in Lake Nasser, where it is unavailable. Egyptian fields must now be artificially fertilized. Gigantic fertilizer plants have been built to meet the new need. The plants require enormous amounts of electricity. The dam must operate at capacity merely to supply the increased need for electricity which was created by the building of the dam”

— John Gall

Source: General systemantics, an essay on how systems work, and especially how they fail..., 1975, p. 18. Cited in: Harvey J. Bertcher (1988) Staff development in human service organizations. p. 45

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The Aswan Dam, built at enormous expense to improve the lot of the Egyptian peasant, has caused the Nile to deposit its…" by John Gall?

John Gall photo

John Gall 13

American physician 1925–2014

Related quotes

“Grief restrains grief as dams torrential rain
And time grows fertile with extended pain”

J. V. Cunningham (1911–1985) American writer

'Exclusion of Rhyme' Alan Swallow Denver 1942
Epigrams

“Painting must be fertile. It must give birth to a world.... it must fertilize the imagination.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

from: Taillandier, 1959; as quoted in Calder Miró, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner / Oliver Wick; Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2004, p. 82, note 24
1940 - 1960

“They can picture love affairs of chemicals and stars, a romance of stones, or the fertility of fire. Strange, fertile correspondences the alchemists sensed in unlikely orders of being. Between men and planets, plants and gestures, words and weather.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

The Lords and the New Creatures: Poems (1969), The Lords: Notes on Vision

“switch (ref $@) { OverflowError => warn 'Dam needs to be drained'; DomainError => warn 'King needs to be trained'; NuclearWarError => die; }”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199709302338.QAA17037@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“An adequately designed spillway is critical to pond management. The purpose of the spillway is to carry surplus water from the pond, away from the face of the dam. It may consist of a mechanical control, such as an exit pipe installed in the base of the dam where it will empty below the dam site.”

Ken Kern American writer

p, 125
The Owner-Built Homestead (1977)

“I believe the Great Pyramid was built to be the Bible in stone. The Egyptians did not build it.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

“Many distinguishing features of the surface may often be ascribed to the operation at a remote era of slow and tranquil causes-to the gradual deposition of sediment in a lake or in the ocean, or to the prolific increase of testacea and corals therein.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.1, p. 2
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

“It concerns the opinion of Naudin and Darwin that a single pollen grain does not suffice for fertilization of the ovule. I used Mirabilis Jalappa for an experimental plant, as Naudin had done; the result of my experiment is, however, completely different. From fertilizations with single pollen grains, I obtained eighteen well-developed seeds, and from these an equal number of plants, of which ten are already in bloom”

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar

Letter VIII, July 3rd, 1870.
Letters to Carl Nägeli

“A mixture of damp peat moss and loamy soil spread around the roots is far better than fertilizer in any form. Do not saturate the hole in which a tree is to be planted with water.”

Ken Kern American writer

p, 125
The Owner-Built Homestead (1977)

“To meet these necessities the Government has been developing a water power project at Muscle Shoals to be equipped to produce nitrogen for explosives and fertilizer. It is my opinion that the support of agriculture is the chief problem to consider in connection with this property. It could by no means supply the present needs for nitrogen, but it would help and its development would encourage bringing other water powers into like use.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Related topics