Environmental Quotes

"The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders." -Edward Abbey

"Remaining silent about the destruction of nature is an endorsement of that destruction." -Edward Abbey

"The essence of true wilderness is big mammals that can eat you." -Edward Abbey

"What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse." -Edward Abbey

"There can be no question about whether we should or should not transform our society in the direction of sustainability." -Alan Atkisson

"A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children." -Audubon

"We are running an uncontrolled experiment on the Earth, and it continues as we go about our daily lives." -Dan Becker

"Protecting something as wide as this planet is still an abstraction for many. Yet I see the day in our own lifetime that reverence for the natural systems — the oceans, the rainforests, the soil , the grasslands, and all other living things — will be so strong that no narrow ideology based upon politics or economics will overcome it." -Jerry Brown, Governor of California

"Fundamentally, sustainable development is a notion of discipline. It means humanity must ensure that meeting present needs does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs." -Gro Harlem Brundtland

"Those who love and free nature are never alone." -Rachel Carson

"If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed." -Chinese Proverb

"The frog does not drink up the pond in which it lives." -Chinese Proverb

"What degree of proof about the human catastrophe from global climate change do we need before we are motivated to act to prevent it?" -Eric Chivian, MD

"The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers. Our survival is no more than a question of 25, 50 or perhaps 100 years." -Jacques Cousteau

"We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking." -Jacques-Yves Cousteau

"Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." -Cree Indian Prophecy

"We share the earth not only with our fellow human beings, but with all the other creatures." -The Dalai Lama

"If we do not begin to relate to the fact that the environment is an ultimate issue and act to preserve our essential ecosystems, we will most certainly lose our evolutionary potential." -Ted Danson

"Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so called scientific knowledge." -Thomas Edison

"Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty." -Albert Einstein

"Sustainability requires maintaining life-supporting natural capital in order for our socioeconomic goals to be met." -Warren Flint

"An act of violence against nature should be judged as severely as that against society or another person." -Dr. Michael W. Fox

"A person who cares about the earth will resonate with its purity." -Sally Fox

"The wildlife of today is not ours to dispose of as we please. We have it in trust, and must account for it to those who come after." -King George VI

"We need a new environmental consciousness on a global basis. To do this, we need to educate people." -Mikhail Gorbachev

"Green business. It's more than a good idea. It's a powerful, practical strategy for shifting society onto a more socially just and environmental sound course." -Alisa Gravitz

"Every time you admire something in nature, it's a prayer to the Creator." -Vernon Harper

"When the planes still swoop down and aerial spray a field in order to kill a predator insect with pesticides, we are in the Dark Ages of commerce." -Paul Hawken

"The only way to avert the catastrophe of neglect is though an evolutionary leap in the way we see and feel our context. We need to experience nature and the universe within ourselves." -Tom Hayden

"Where the quality of life goes down for the environment, the quality of life goes down for humans." -George Holland

"If you can make clothes and paper out of what is basically a weed while taking care of the environment within practical means...All I know is that industrial hemp should be part of the equation." -Dennis Hopper

"The ecological crisis is doing what no other crisis in history has ever done — challenging us to a realization of a new humanity." -Jean Houston

"We are each as much a part of the environment as a tree is. The ecosphere is an interconnected web (like the Internet)." -Matt Howes

"Nature is the unseen intelligence that loved us into being." -Elbert Hubbard

"Modern man no longer regards Nature as in any sense divine and feels perfectly free to behave toward her as an overweening conqueror and tyrant." -Aldous Huxley

"One person can make all the difference in the world. For the first time in recorded human history, we have the fate of the whole planet in our hands." -Chrissie Hynde

"The best hemp and the best tobacco grow on the same kind of soil. The former article is of the first necessity to the wealth and protection of the country. The latter, never useful." -Thomas Jefferson

"We are seeing the birth of a new perspective of the world, where ecology and economics are two sides of the same coin." -Leif Johansson

"The wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit." -Joseph Wood Krutch

"In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it." -Aldo Leopold

"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." -Aldo Leopold

"After centuries of idiocy, people are finally learning to respect the complexity and self-regulation of nature. No longer does America assume that we can help deer by killing off all the wolves, or help forests by putting out all of their fires." -Grace Llewellyn

"I do not see a delegation for the four-footed. I see no seat for the eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior." -Chief Oren Lyons

"Out of all those millions and millions of planets floating around there in space, this is our planet, this is our little one, so we just got to be aware of it and take care of it." -Paul McCartney

"There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew." -Marshall McLuhan

"It was not until we saw the picture of the earth, from the moon, that we realized how small and how helpless this planet is — something that we must hold in our arms and care for." -Margaret Mead

"Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got till it's gone
They pave paradise and put up a parking lot." -Joni Mitchell, "Big Yellow Taxi"

"I have no other wish than a close fusion with nature and I desire no other fate than to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws." -Claud Monet

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools." -John Muir

"When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves." -David Orr

"By now it should be clear that environmental consumerism is not a fad or even a short-term trend. It is a way of life with broad support throughout our society." -Jacquelyn A. Ottman

"No issue is more compelling than the air we breathe, be it hot or cold, be it hawk or human." -Jack Nicholson

"Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle." -Pope John Paul II

"Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the people of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it." -Ted Perry

"Kindler and rekindler of universes, the fire burns forever. It is the flame of life that courses through all generations from first to last, that burns without consuming, that is itself consumed and renewed inexhaustibly, life after life, generation after generation, species after species, galaxy after galaxy, universe after universe, each sharing in the blaze for its season and going down to death while the fire burns on undiminished. The fire is life itself, the life of this universe, of this galaxy, of this planet, of this place and every place: the place by the rock and the place under the hill and the place by the river and the place in the forest, no two alike anywhere. And the life of every place is god, who is the fire: the life of the pond, god; the life of the tundra, god; the life of the sea, god; the life of the land, god; the life of the earth, god; the life of the universe. god: in every place unique, as the life of every place is unique, and in every place the same, as the fire that burns is everywhere the fire of life." -Daniel Quinn

"Tropical rainforests are home to half of all the living things on our planet. But that home now is being destroyed faster than any other natural community on earth." -Dan Rather

"Progress from now on has to mean something different." -Robert Redford

"Everything is either, protection, food, or shelter for the creatures who live here, and 275 years ago, the Indians survived on natural resources." -Peter Rice

"A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people." -Franklin D. Roosevelt

"A way of life that ever more rapidly depletes the power of the Earth to sustain it and piles up ever more insoluble problems for each succeeding generation can only be called violent." -E. F. Schumacher

"We still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only with our fellow men but also with nature and, above all, with those Higher Powers which have made nature and have made us." -E.F. Schumacher

"Only to the white man was nature a 'wilderness'." -Luther Standing Bear

"The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too." -Luther Standing Bear

"If you really want to define civilization it should be a culture that doesn't destroy its environment. If you burn down the kitchen one day and expect to eat the next, it is not even intelligent, let alone civilized." -Sting

"We are living on this planet as if we had another one to go to." -Terri Swearingen

"You can tell how high a society is by how much of its garbage is recycled." -Tahanie

"In Wildness is the preservation of the World." -Henry David Thoreau

"Thank GOD, they cannot cut down the clouds!" -Henry David Thoreau

"What is the use of a House if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?" -Henry David Thoreau

"We must go through a natural revolution if we are to survive on earth. We need to change people's perceptions. If there's no environment, there's no human race. We are in a state of global denial." -Ted Turner

"Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man." -Stewart Udall

"The continued poverty of the majority of the planet's inhabitants and excessive consumption by the minority are the two major causes of environmental degradation." -UN Environment Program

"Everyone who considers themselves a realist will be forced to justify their behavior in light of their contribution toward the preservation of the environment." -Ernst von Weizacker

"Our only choice, whatever our dogma, is to protect the Earth. This is our common progress or our common ruin. There is nothing in between." -Barbra Ward

"When we realize we can make a buck cleaning up the environment, it will be done!" -Dennis Weaver

"Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction." -Dr. Edward O. Wilson

"When we Indians kill meat, we eat it all up. When we dig roots, we make little holes. When we build houses, we make little holes. When we burn grass for grasshoppers, we don't ruin things. We shake down acorns and pine nuts. We don't chop down the trees. We only use dead wood. But the white people plow up the ground, pull down the trees, kill everything. ...the White people pay no attention. ...How can the spirit of the earth like the White man? ... everywhere the White man has touched it, it is sore." -Wintu Woman, 19th Century

"The best friend of earth of man is the tree. When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources on the earth." -Frank Lloyd Wright

"If we once — and for so long — lived in balance with nature and each other, we should be able to do so again." -John Zerzan

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