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Switching whole hog to renewable energy at today’s level of electricity consumption is not possible for the United States, although I’ve heard people talk about it as if it were an attainable goal. At today’s rates of electricity consumption and generation, powering America using only hydropower would require fifty functioning Hoover Dams within each one of the fifty states of the Union. Powering America using only wind power would require more than one million wind turbines, or one every mile or so across the whole of the continental United States. As for solar energy, a land area the size of South Carolina would have to be sacrificed to solar panels in order to generate America’s annual diet of electricity. Entirely switching over to renewables at their present rate of efficiency is, unfortunately, a pipe dream.

— The Story of More by Hope Jahren

To get one pound of salmon, you need three pounds of fish meal. To get a pound of fish meal, you need to grind up five pounds of fish. Thus, each pound of cage-raised salmon “costs” fifteen pounds of fish from the ocean. At present, about one-third of the total catch fished out of the ocean is ground up into fish meal and then fed to fish that live in pens. Anchovies, herring, and sardines are the most fished fish in the world, and almost all of the catch is used as fish meal for aquaculture. These small fish are also foragers, which means that they survive on plankton—the tiniest plants and animals of the ocean. Foragers are near the base of the ocean’s food web, where they serve as a staple food source for more charismatic species, including dolphins, sea lions, and humpback whales. More small fish diverted into aquaculture to feed us means less food left in the ocean to feed them.

— The Story of More by Hope Jahren

Rincewind had never studied meteorology, although he had been an end-user all his life.

— The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett, Nigel Planer

Any seasoned traveller soon learns to avoid anything wished on them as a ‘regional speciality’, because all the term means is that the dish is so unpleasant the people living everywhere else will bite off their own legs rather than eat it. But hosts still press it upon distant guests anyway: ‘Go on, have the dog’s head stuffed with macerated cabbage and pork noses — it’s a regional speciality.’

— The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett, Nigel Planer

‘Do go on, Mister Stibbons,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘We're all ears. Especially the elephant.’

— The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett, Nigel Planer

Suddenly the birds stopped. A branch creaked. The drop-bear … dropped.

It was a close relative of the koala, although this doesn’t mean very much. After all, the closest relative of the common elephant is about the size and shape of a rabbit. The drop-bear’s most notable feature was its posterior, thick and heavily padded to provide the maximum shock to the victim with the minimum shock to the bear. The initial blow rendered the prey unconscious, and then the bears could gather round to feed. It was a magnificent method of killing, since in other respects the bears were not very well built to be serious predators, and it was therefore particularly unfortunate for this bear that it chose, on this night, to drop on a man who might well have had ‘Victim’ written all over him but also had ‘Wizzard’ written on his hat, and that this hat, most significantly, came to a point.

Rincewind lumbered to his feet and ran into a few trees while he tried, with both hands on the brim, to lift his hat off his head. He managed it at last, stared in horror at the bear and its peculiarly confused expression, and shook it off and into the bushes. There were thumps around him as more bears, disoriented by this turn of events, hit the ground and bounced wildly.

— The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett, Nigel Planer

As horses went, this one went slowly. It moved in a stolid, I-can-do-this-all-day manner that clearly said the only way you get me to go faster will be to push me off a cliff. It had a curious gait, somewhere faster than a trot but slower than a canter. The effect was a jolting slightly out of synchronization with the moment of inertia in any known human organ, causing everything inside Rincewind to bounce off everything else. Also, if he forgot for a second and lowered his legs, Snowy went on without him, and this meant that he had to run ahead and stand there like a croquet hoop until he caught him up.

— The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett, Nigel Planer

Det viktigste vi kan gjøre for å utvide og forbedre velferdsstaten i Norge er imidlertid å øke skattene for de som har aller mest.Mer av de rikes kjøpekraft må inndras. Da vil vi kunne bruke flere av våre menneskelige ressurser på felles velferd, istedenfor produksjon av overskudd ti llandets bedriftseiere. I framtida vil en slik vridning av arbeidskraftressurser over mot felles velferd bli tvinende nødvendig

— Kampen om verdiene by Ola Innset (Page 104)