The climate system that raised us, and raised everything we now know as human culture and civilization, is now, like a parent, dead." ("Cascades" paragraph 3)

Importance: In this quotation, Wallace-Wells suggests that the damage humans have done to the planet through greenhouse gas emissions is irreversible. He therefore suggests that we must come up with an entirely new framework to live within an entirely new climate system.

Especially those who have imbibed several centuries of Western triumphalism tend to see the story of human civilization as an inevitable conquest of the earth, rather than the saga of an insecure culture, like mold, growing haphazardly and unsurely upon it." ("Cascades" paragraph 3)

Importance: In this quotation, Wallace-Wells argues that although the progress attributed to western civilization is often seen as durable and permanent by people alive today, it has actually always been fragile. It will become even more so, he suggests, under adverse climate conditions.

Which cities will... ("Heat Death" paragraph 2)