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Quotes

If Humboldt were on Twitter today

He liked to formulate succinct sentences and deliver punch lines. He took a stand against slavery, colonialism and environmental destruction. What stance would Humboldt take on current issues? We present his quotes in a new light.

“Ideas can only be of use if they start living in many minds.”
QUOTE: From Humboldt to Ludwig Bullmann, Cumaná (Venezuela), 13 October 1799 | PHOTO: Philadelphia, United States: cyclist in city traffic, December 2016
“Gold digging is a European disease, which borders on mania.”
QUOTE: Travel Journal, visit to Honda (Colombia), 18 – 22 June 1801 | PHOTO: Anti-fracking protest against planned test drilling by the British energy company Cuadrilla in Balcombe, UK, 2013.
“It is not enough to complain; one has to work at remedying the complaints.”
QUOTE: From Humboldt to Wilhelm Gabriel Wegener, Berlin, 3 June 1788 | PHOTO: On Idjwi Island, part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a member of the NGO Doctors Without Borders examines a child with cholera.
„The climate of the continents [is dependent on the changes] which humans call forth on the surface of the land masses [...] by the production of huge masses of steam and gas in the centres of industry.“
QUOTE: „Central Asia. Investigations of the Mountain Ranges and Comparative Climatology.“, 1844 | PHOTO: Brayton Point Power Station in the U.S, state of Massachusetts. The facility was shut down in 2017.
„The Indios share the same fate as the Africans: If they are not actually being massacred, they are thought to be thriving.“
QUOTE: Travel Journal, Lima (Peru), 23 October - 24 December 1802 | PHOTO: São Paulo, Brazil: Indigenous people protest against threats to ancestral land rights in 2015.
„Truth itself is precious, but even more precious is the ability to find it.“
QUOTE: To Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Hamburg, 3 October 1790 | PHOTO: Donald Trump, seen here before he became US President, being driven through New York in a limousine (December 1999).
“To argue about which nation treats the blacks with greater humanity is to ridicule the word humanity and to ask whether it is pleasanter to have your stomach slit open or be tortured.”
QUOTE: Travel Journal, Guayaquil (Ecuador), 4 January – 17 February 1803 | PHOTO: On 30.01.2018, migrants are brought to Augusta, Sicily, on board the MS Aquarius by SOS Méditerranée and Doctors Without Borders. In Augusta, the corpses of two passengers are recovered from the boat
“I thoroughly detest people who are always gauging and weighing up whether it would be beneficial to grant someone or other their friendship.“
QUOTE: To Wilhelm Gabriel Wegener, Berlin, 24 February 1788 | PHOTO: The homepage of the social network "Facebook"
“The larger the colonies and the more rigorous the European governments in their political malice, all the more will the immorality of the colonies have to increase.“
QUOTE: Travel Journal, Guayaquil (Ecuador), 4 January – 17 February 1803 | PHOTO: A cobalt mine in the Congo, where workers risk their lives for a wage of about three dollars a day. One of the products for which the raw material is needed is the smartphone.
“In these latitudes, it is difficult for a European to remain a decent person, where impunity prevails even amongst the clergy, so that I ask God every day not to let me die here because I would undoubtedly be damned. “
QUOTE: Travel Journal, Guayaquil (Ecuador), 4 January – 17 February 1803 | PHOTO: Pope Francis at the weekly General Audience in St Peter’s Square, Vatican City, on 24 October 2018.