Dams Quotes

“I don’t know why we keep building these fucking dams,” Adams said in a surprisingly forceful British whisper. “Not only do they cause environmental and social disasters, they, with very few exceptions, all fail to do what they were supposed to do in the first place. Look at the Amazon, where they’ve all silted up. What is the reaction to that? They’re going to build another eighty of them. It’s just balmy. We must have beaver genes or something. . . . There’s just this kind of sensational desire to build dams, and maybe that should be looked at and excised from human nature. Maybe the Human Genome Project can locate the beaver/dam-building gene and cut that out.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Even though this generation still believes in the miracle working power of God, they must no longer wait for God to bring water from the rocks, but rather construct dams, water systems, subdue the power of the ocean thereby give glory to God almighty”
― Sunday Adelaja

“Not everyone is placid enough to build bridges over. Not everyone is submissive enough to allow dams. Some are meant to be free. Flowing.”
― Nitya Prakash

“In the view of conservationists, there is something special about dams, something—as conservation problems go—that is disproportionately and metaphysically sinister. The outermost circle of the Devil’s world seems to be a moat filled mainly with DDT. Next to it is a moat of burning gasoline. Within that is a ring of pinheads each covered with a million people—and so on past phalanxed bulldozers and bicuspid chain saws into the absolute epicenter of Hell on earth, where stands a dam.”
― John McPhee, Encounters with the Archdruid

“[A] pile driver was improvised by mounting a large steam donkey engine, a steam hammer, and a timber tower on a barge.”
― Ray Bottenberg

“What do you consider the most interesting man-made structure in the galaxy?

The dam they are building at the Three Gorges on the Yangtse. Though perhaps '“baffling'” would be a better word. Dams almost never do what they were intended to do, but create devastation beyond belief. And yet we keep on building them, and I can'’t help but wonder why. I'’m convinced that if we go back far enough in the history of the human species, we will find some beaver genes creeping in there somewhere. It'’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
― Douglas Adams

“By erecting thirty thousand dams of significant size across the American West, they dewatered countless rivers, wiped out millions of acres of riparian habitat, shut off many thousands of river miles of salmon habitat, silted over spawning beds, poisoned return flows with agricultural chemicals, set the plague of livestock loose on the arid land--in a nutshell they made it close to impossible for numerous native species to survive.”
― Marc Reisner

“Semoga aku bisa memelukmu, mengikis kerinduanmu dan menghapus air matamu. Semoga pada saat itu Allah mengalirkan pahala Nya kepada kita di antara pelukan-pelukan itu.”
― Sasdanu Priambodo

“Bukan kata-kata atau pun suara yang terdengar, namun bisikan hati yang mengiringinya,”
― Sasdanu Priambodo

“A dam is monumentally static; it tries to bring a river under control, to regulate its seasonal pattern of floods and low flow.”
― Patrick McCully, Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams

“A dam tears at all the interconnected webs of river valley life.”
― Patrick McCully, Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams

“Bukan kata-kata atau pun suara yang terdengar, namun bisikan hati yang mengiringinya.”
― Sasdanu Priambodo

“Dams also tend to be built in remote areas which are the last refuge for species that have been displaced by development in other regions.”
― Patrick McCully, Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams

“Underlying many aspects of water development is a myth: the myth that we must have more.”
― Tim Palmer, Endangered Rivers and the Conservation Movement

“In the 1940s dams were synonymous with progress, and the rivers were to be conquered with the fervour of a pioneer wielding an axe.”
― Tim Palmer, Endangered Rivers and the Conservation Movement

“All power is saved, having no end.     Rises
in the green season, in the sudden season
the white the budded
                                             and the lost.”
― Muriel Rukeyser, The Book of the Dead

“Most big freshwater fish, in most parts of the world, have all but disappeared from most places where they used to live. As with arapaima, the main reason is over-harvesting, but there are other factors too. Dams block the migration routes of many fish, so they disappear from the water above the dam — or even altogether, if breeding grounds are cut off. Draining of floodplains, cutting off backwaters, competition from invasive species and pollution also play a part. And sometimes it's just willful slaughter, as was the case with the North American alligator gar in the early 1900s, thanks to the incorrect assumption that killing these predators would boost populations of ‘game’ fish.”
― Jeremy Wade, How to Think Like a Fish: And Other Lessons from a Lifetime in Angling