Standing Room Quotes (1 quote)
If the earth’s population continues to double every 50 years (as it is now doing) then by 2550 A.D. it will have increased 3,000-fold. … by 2800 A.D., it would reach 630,000 billion! Our planet would have standing room only, for there would be only two-and-a-half square feet per person on the entire land surface, including Greenland and Antarctica. In fact, if the human species could be imagined as continuing to multiply further at the same rate, by 4200 A.D. the total mass of human tissue would be equal to the mass of the earth.
In The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science: The Biological Sciences (1960), 117. Also in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 237.

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) --
Carl Sagan
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