Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh Quotes

Have you run over anybody?

Are you all one family?

So long as they [birth control methods] ... remained taboo subjects the chances of making any impression on the human population explosion were that much more remote.
In the introduction to the IUCN Red Data Books which list all animals and plants under threat of extinction, it says that virtually everywhere the major threat to a wild species is loss of habitat to a rapidly increasing human population requiring more space in order to build villages and cities and grow more food. But starvation and poverty cannot be eradicated solely by increased food and resources at the expense of what remains of the natural world. Any increase in the provision of food and resources must be accompanied by a drastic reduction in the rate of increase in the human population.

There may be disagreements about the time scale, but in principle there can be little doubt that the population cannot go on increasing indefinitely. Resources presently being used will not last for ever and pollution in its broadest sense, unless severely checked, is bound to increase with population and industrial activity.

I sympathise desperately with the people who are bereaved at Dunblane, but I'm not altogether convinced that it's the best system to somehow shift the blame onto a very large and peaceable part of the community. I mean if ... look, if somebody ... if a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat which he could do very easily, I mean are you going to ban cricket bats? I'm not sure that the reaction is the most rational. I think one's got to make a difference between what the weapons can do and what the people can do.

Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf.

As its name implies, World Wildlife Fund is in the business of raising money for the conservation of nature and to that end Fleur Cowles — a long time and dedicated supporter of the Fund — has offered a proportion of the royalities from the sale of this book to WWF.
It is easy enough to feel an affinity to a particular species of animal, but I just wonder what it would be like to be reincarnated in an animal whose species had been so reduced in numbers that it was in danger of extinction. What would be its feelings towards the human species whose population explosion had denied it somewhere to exist and by sheer indifference had destroyed any chance of it finding a mate and producing a family? There are not just a few such species, there are a great many and the list is getting longer every day. When I look at the shelf with all the volumes of the Red Data Books listing endangered species I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus, but that is perhaps going too far. I would much rather see the human species voluntarily restrict its numbers out of consideration for the rest of the living world with which it still has a chance of sharing this planet.

It is an old cliche to say that the future is in the hands of the young. This is no longer true. The quality of life to be enjoyed or the existence to be survived by our children and future generations is in our hands now.

How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?

The conflict between instinct and reason has reached a critical stage in man's affairs, largely because the explosion of facts has revealed the instincts for what they are and at the same time it has undermined traditional philosophies and ideologies. The explosion of facts has effectively altered mankind's physical and intellectual environment and when any environment changes, the process of natural selection is brutal and merciless. «Adapt or die» is as true today as it was in the beginning.

Aren't most of you descended from pirates?

Ninety-five per cent of the Atlantic rainforest in Brazil has disappeared in the last hundred years. There is simply nowhere for the animals to live. At the basis of it all is this colossal increase in the human population which is reaching plague proportions.

Education, journalism, technology, entertainment and business may also find better methods for their purpose than books and writing. But this does not mean that tapes and films have made books obsolescent—the contention is almost too ludicrous to be taken seriously. Books are certainly old fashioned, but only people with a very limited perception are silly enough to condemn ideas because of their age. It is, of course, equally silly to condemn the new fangled simply because it is strange, and I am full of admiration for the technologists who have developed all sorts of gadgets for the purpose of improving communications. However, I believe that all these fascinating machines are complementary to, and not substitutes for, books and the printed word.

British women can't cook.

When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife.