Quotation Exercise, Essay Example

1. In-text quotation:

With the population of the world now at seven billion, the question of feeding the world’s humans is a daunting one. Some say in the tradition of Thomas Malthus that the world will soon reach a crisis point in which it will no longer be able to support our exponential population growth and continual environmentally exploitative practices. Others, however, take a more hopeful view on the situation. Ray Percival, modern-day Malthus scholar, sees a positive aspect of population growth: “With humans, scarcity is the mother of abundance. When people want more usable land they just go out and create it (26),”he writes. He means that with a growing population and greater pressures on our resources human ingenuity will flourish and create ways around these obstacles as we have for all of our existence.

2. Block quotation:

In Western schools there is little focus on the histories of Asian civilizations. We learn about the Crusades, the American Revolution and the great historical significance of Western civilizations such as the Roman empire on the rest of the world but very little on the impressive histories of Asian nations. Professor Charles O. Hucker of Michigan University points out the great legacy of ancient Chinese civilization in his work.

Han China, contemporaneous with the Roman empire in the West, rivaled if it did not surpass Rome in its achievements. It created stable aristocratic social order, expanded geographically and economically, and spread Chinese political influence not only into neighboring Vietnam and Korea, but also across Central Asia to the Pamirs. The traditional Chinese excelled in many things, but in nothing else so much as in organizing themselves harmoniously (121).

Clearly by ignoring an empire contemporaneous and as successful as the familiar Roman empire is an indication of the extreme euro-centricity we have reached in our educational system.

Works Cited

Hucker, Charles O. China’s Imperial Past: an Introduction to Chinese History and Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1975. Print.

Percival, Ray. “Malthus and His Ghost: When He Formulated His Theory He Ignored the Ingenuity of Man.” National Review, Vol. 41: 18 August 1989. Print