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1 " However life started, once established, it persisted for over 3.5 billion years and evolved from microbial slime to the sophistication of human civilization. "
― David C. Catling , Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction
2 " Life on earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive life form – perhaps a self-replicating molecule – that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection. "
― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True
3 " Our essential difficulty is that we are seeking in a mechanism, which is necessary, qualities it simply does not possess. The market does not lead, balance or encourage democracy. However, properly regulated it is the most effective way to conduct business.It cannot give leadership even on straight economic issues. The world-wide depletion of fish stocks is a recent example. The number of fish caught between 1950 and 1989 multiplied by five. The fishing fleet went from 585,000 boats in 1970 to 1.2 million in 1990 and on to 3.5 million today (1995). No one thought about the long- or even medium-term maintenance of stocks; not the fishermen, not the boat builders, not the fish wholesalers who found new uses for their product, including fertilizer and chicken feed; not the financiers. It wasn't their job. Their job was to worry about their own interests.(IV - From Managers and Speculators to Growth) "
― John Ralston Saul , The Unconscious Civilization
4 " China uses about half of the world’s cement for its new roads and buildings.According to the World Bank in 2007, China had 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities.One day in January 2013, the air pollution index in Beijing was 755—measured on a scale of 0 to 500!In late 2012, 16,000 dead pigs were found floating in the river that supplies water toShanghai, the PRC’s largest city. For 2010, a ministry of the Chinese government estimated the monetary cost of the environmental damage caused by rapid industrialization at $230 billion, which is 3.5 percent of China’s gross domestic product.Air pollution from Chinese factories wafts over to the Koreas and Japan. Sometimes, upper atmospheric winds carry the sulphur dioxide from China’s coal-burning clear over to North America’s west coast. "
5 " When I returned from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972, my father was running a forging business with a turnover of Rs 3.5 crore. But I had no patience and wanted to grow the business via exports. "