# Quote — Edgar Pangborn, A Mirror for Observers

> The three billion crawl about, all over the helpless earth, destroying and defiling, killing the forests, polluting the air with smoke and radioactive dust and the torturing noises of the machine. In place of meadows, filling stations. The lakes are puddles of human filth. Two years ago the whole area of San Francisco Harbor was covered with dead fish: even the ocean is sick from the human taint, and this they call progress.

- Author: [Edgar Pangborn](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edgar-pangborn.md)
- Book: [A Mirror for Observers](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edgar-pangborn/a-mirror-for-observers.md)
- Page: 201
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edgar_Pangborn#A_Mirror_for_Observers_(1954)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/edgar-pangborn/a-mirror-for-observers/the-three-billion

## More from this book

> Never, beautiful Earth, never even at the height of the human storms have I forgotten you, my planet Earth, your forests and your fields, your oceans, the serenity of your mountains; the meadows, the continuing rivers, the incorruptible promise of returning spring.

p. 222 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edgar-pangborn/a-mirror-for-observers/never-beautiful-earth.md)

> I admit almost every charge of the indictment. The only thing wrong with it is that it’s too partial, too trivial. You’ve spent your life hunting for counterfeit money in a pile of treasure. You looked for evil all your life, to prove your case—naturally you found it, and where it was absent you created it. Any fool can do that. I’ve looked for good in human nature and elsewhere, and found it, heaped up and flowing over. Anyone can do that too, though good may be a little harder to see, because it’s all around you, no further away than the nearest leaf, the nearest smile or pleasant word, no further away than every breath of air. You say there’s no truth in men. Do you know what truth is, any more than Pilate did? Human beings are in the early stages of trying to accept and understand empirical truth.

p. 201 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edgar-pangborn/a-mirror-for-observers/i-admit-almost.md)

> If you’re interested in ethics, you could do worse than think in terms of geological time.

p. 178 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edgar-pangborn/a-mirror-for-observers/if-youre-interested.md)