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Pentti Linkola Quotes (1932-2020)
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About Pentti Linkola
Kaarlo Pentti Linkola (7 December 1932 - 5 April 2020) was a prominent Finnish deep ecologist, ornithologist, polemicist, naturalist, writer, and fisherman. He wrote widely about his ideas and in Finland was a prominent thinker. Linkola was a year-round fisherman from 1959 to 1995. He fished on Keitele, PΓ€ijΓ€nne and Gulf of Finland, and since 1978 he fished on Vanajavesi. Linkola blamed humans for the continuous degradation of the environment. He promoted rapid population decline to combat the problems commonly attributed to overpopulation.
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βThe 20th century peatlands ditching in Finland was the worst human environmental destruction action in Europe.β
βThe difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is a matter of perspective: it all depends on the observer and the verdict of history.β
βThe most wretched of all current trends is of course the mass extinction of organisms, which has been escalating for decades and is still increasing in magnitude.β
βThe coming years will prove increasingly cynical and cruel. People will definitely not slip into oblivion while hugging each other. The final stages in the life of humanity will be marked by the monstrous war of all against all: the amount of suffering will be maximal.β
βThe US is the most wretchedly villainous state of all times. Anyone aware of global issues can easily imagine how vast the hatred for the United States - a corrupted, swollen, paralysing and suffocating political entity - must be across the Third World - and among the thinking minority of the West too.β
βWhat to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the shipβs axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides of the boat.β
βIt is an assumption brought forth countless of times in various contexts that the world would be better, drifting slower towards the ruin, if women had the "power"; if political leadership, decision making, government and economic life was in the hands of women. I think reality, the observation material, supports the assumption.β
βAlthough my view is a world-wide one and my area of observation is Europe, the nation closest to my heart is, understandably, my homeland. And it is a fortunate coincidence, fortunate in terms of the explanation of the world, that it is this country which is the clearest example of the playground of destructive development in the whole world.β
βHow can anyone think so insanely that the human life has the same value and mankind, the same morality, independent of numbers? It is lucid to me that everytime a new child is born, the value of every human in world decreases slightly. It is obvious to me that the morality of the population explosion is wholly unlike than when man was a sparse, noble species in its beginning.β
βThe crippling human cover spread over the living layer of the Earth must forcibly be made lighter: breathing holes must be punctured in this blanket and the ecological footprint of man brushed away. Forms of boastful consumption must violently be crushed, the natality of the species violently controlled, and the number of those already born violently reduced β by any means possible.β
βThose who died in the attack were not simply humans: they were Americans; and not ordinary Americans, either, but the priests and priestesses of the supreme God of this age: the Dollar. The passengers of the domestic flights are not a valid sample of humanity either, but a wealthy, busy, environmentally damaging and world-devouring portion of mankind.β
βMan has learned nothing: there are people who are still sanctimonious in their opposition to violence regardless of the state of the world, and who will presumably continue in the same way until the end. Frolicking in peace and love must be sweet β no doubt about that. Yet it is a nonsensical and disastrous attitude. With a smothering shroud of six billion people and all their demands covering the surface of the earth, pacifism is dead.β
βVirtually, Finnish woods are stripped so bare, so sold out and first and foremost, so long way off from genuine diverse natural forest, that the resources of language will not permit excessive words. Finnish forest economy has been compared to the ravaging of rain forests. Nevertheless, the noteworthy difference is that there is a half or two thirds left from rain forests, but from Finnish forests there is left - excluding arctic Lapland - 0,6 per cent.β
βFinnish forests: Let us remind the satellite pictures of the 1970βs winter in which the old forest appeared black and young forest and cut downs white. Already then the Finnish borders were like drawn on the map: White Finland between black Karelian and black Sweden. Finnish Forest Research Institute hicced up some time and then decided that the pictures are fake. . .β
βWhen a novel department store called Gigantti was opened in the capitol area a year or two ago, which promised gadgets of many colors for the stinking cheap price of 9:90, 99:90, 999:90; the parking field's rafts of metal plated beetles reached the horizon, and the human lines wriggling midst them in tens of thousands surpassed all the records of the good old Soviet Union. As I looked at those newspaper pictures, a tormented scream erupted from my lips: no democracy, for heaven's sake, no democracy! No common voting right, never! No, no, no!β
Pentti Linkola Quotes by Topic
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Pentti Linkola on Terrorism
βThe difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is a matter of perspective: it all depends on the observer and the verdict of history.β
Pentti Linkola on Extinction
βThe most wretched of all current trends is of course the mass extinction of organisms, which has been escalating for decades and is still increasing in magnitude.β
Pentti Linkola on Overpopulation
βIt is still the case that the worst enemies of life are, on the one hand, an excess of life (human life, in particular) and, on the other, the legislation and structure of societies based on market economy. The sturdier a society, the more peaceful it is; the more efficient economic growth (i.e., the ransacking of natural resources), the quicker other forms of life will step aside. Everything that upsets the established order of society, causing chaos and panic, gives time to nature and, ultimately, humans too.β
About Pentti Linkola
Kaarlo Pentti Linkola (7 December 1932 - 5 April 2020) was a prominent Finnish deep ecologist, ornithologist, polemicist, naturalist, writer, and fisherman. He wrote widely about his ideas and in Finland was a prominent thinker. Linkola was a year-round fisherman from 1959 to 1995. He fished on Keitele, PΓ€ijΓ€nne and Gulf of Finland, and since 1978 he fished on Vanajavesi. Linkola blamed humans for the continuous degradation of the environment. He promoted rapid population decline to combat the problems commonly attributed to overpopulation.