I asked him, “Do you know the difference between nude and naked?” He shook his head. “Nude is artistic. Naked is defenseless.” - Larry Niven

Once the ocean teamed with life, Svetz thought. Now the continental shelf is as dead as the moon: nothing but bubble cities. Once this whole continent was all forest and living desert and fresh water. We cut down the trees and shot the animals and poisoned to the rivers and irrigated the deserts so that even the desert life died; and now there’s nothing left but the food yeast and us.
We’ve forgotten so much about the past that we can’t separate legend from fact. We’ve wiped out most of the forms of life on earth in the last fifteen hundred years, and changed the composition of the air to the extent that we’d be afraid to change it back.
I fear the unknown beasts of the past. I cannot breathe the air. I do not know the edible plants. I could not kill the animals for food. I do not know which would kill me.
The earth’s past is as alien to me as another planet.

"Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself. As soon as a species becomes intelligent, it should stop evolving." "A"

The medical revolution that began with the beginning of the twentieth century had warped all human society for five hundred years. America had adjusted to Eli Whitney's cotton gin in less than half that time. As with the gin, the effects would never quite die out. But already society was swinging back to what had once been normal. Slowly; but there was motion. In Brazil a small but growing alliance agitated for the removal of the death penalty for habitual traffic offenders. They would be opposed, but they would win.