327 Environment Quotes

We need a little more compassion, and if we cannot have it then no politician or even a magician can save the planet.

The earth only has so much bounty to offer and inventing ever larger and more notional prices for that bounty does not change its real value.

After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which it generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.

My idea of an amusement park story is getting adventurers to go tour environmental disaster areas. After all, if the entire Great Barrier Reef gets killed, which seems like an extremely lively possibility, what are you going to do with all that rotting limestone?

It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than to his planet; the bylaws are shorter, and he is personally acquainted with the other members.

New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.

I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving.

My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.

One is not quite certain that creativeness in the arts, literature, and science functions best in an environment of absolute freedom. Chances are that a relatively mild tyranny stimulates creativeness.

If we want to save our planet earth, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system.

Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders' spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground.

Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.

What do we plant when we plant a tree? A thousand things that we daily see, We plant the spire that out-towers the crag, We plant the staff for our country's flag; We plant the shade from the hot sun free, We plant all these when we plant the tree.

Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature's gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.

Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.

Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer.

Gaia's main problems are not industrialization, ozone depletion, overpopulation, or resource depletion. Gaia's main problem is the lack of mutual understanding and mutual agreement in the noosphere about how to proceed with those problems. We cannot rein in industry if we cannot reach mutual understanding and mutual agreement based on a worldcentric moral perspective concerning the global commons. And we reach the worldcentric moral perspective through a difficult and laborious process of interior growth and transcendence.

Countless people have attempted to define the absolute power of the world of nature. Some praise it as god, some call it the Buddha, others call it truth. Still others convert nature into a philosophy by which they attempt to sound its deepest truth. Such attempts to define the power of nature are no more than striving to escape its effects.

Why do people build houses to keep the climate out, then cut holes in the walls to let it in again? I shall never understand.

The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture.

There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.

We are living beyond our means. As a people we have developed a life-style that is draining the earth of its priceless and irreplaceable resources without regard for the future of our children and people all around the world.

Technology is that which separates us from our environment.

There's a smokestack on the back of every government program.

As the moral gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gaiety, even so was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest.

Common man has at long last got himself so far out of gear with nature and his environment that he is beginning to see the shape of extinction, whether he recognizes it as such or not.

Obviously, the answer to oil spills is to paper-train the tankers.

Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.

I have a lot of chameleon qualities, I get very absorbed in my surroundings.

Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans.

Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump for a speech on conservation.

We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed, for our safety, to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave - to the ancient enemies of man - half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.

If Soviet Russia were to fire over this zone with nuclear weapons directed at France, or if, conversely, the Americans or the French were to fire over this territory with nuclear weapons towards Russia, the resulting radioactive clouds would be driven into this territory by the west winds from the one side, and the east winds from the other, and the Soviet Union could certainly not request the winds to keep to a specific path.

If I may be allowed just three wishes, they would be these. Firstly, I would like to see some evidence of extra-terrestrial life. I have always believed that we are not alone in the universe. But we are still waiting for ETs to call us - or give us some kind of a sign. We have no way of guessing when this might happen - I hope sooner rather than later! Secondly, I would like to see us kick our current addiction to oil, and adopt clean energy sources. ... Climate change has now added a new sense of urgency. Our civilisation depends on energy, but we can't allow oil and coal to slowly bake our planet: The third wish is one closer to home. I've been living in Sri Lanka for 50 years - and half that time, I've been a sad witness to the bitter conflict that divides my adopted country. I dearly wish to see lasting peace established in Sri Lanka as soon as possible.

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought.

In the West, where our skin has turned White, we have ceased to recognise our kinship with animals.

I seek through comprehensive anticipatory design science and its reductions to physical practices to reform the environment instead of trying to reform humans, being intent thereby to accomplish prototyped capabilities of doing more with less... (1947)

Our little Spaceship Earth is only eight thousand miles in diameter, which is almost a negligible dimension in the great vastness of space. . . . Spaceship Earth was so extraordinarily well invented and designed that to our knowledge humans have been on board it for two million years not even knowing that they were on board a ship.

There are over 2 million cars standing in front of red lights with their engines going. Then we have over 2 million times approximately 100 horsepower being generated as they are idling there, so that we have something like 200 million horses jumping up and down and going nowhere. Now, we have to count that in our economy when we begin to get down to what is the efficiency of the economy.

We are on a spaceship; a beautiful one. It took billions of years to develop. We're not going to get another. Now, how do we make this spaceship work?

Years of misguided teaching have resulted in the destruction of the best in our society, in our cultures and in the environment.

You know, if people are not pacifists, it's not their fault. It's because society puts them in that spot. You've got to change it. You don't just change a man - you've got to change his environment as you do it.

Natural grass is a wonderful thing for little bugs and sinker-ball pitchers.

'Being a physicist, my father was a great believer in progress, but he also loved nature. He was a photographer, and outside of taking the occasional family photographs, all he did was photograph nature. He loved birds. That meant a lot to me growing up. Healthy progress also means we have to be concerned for the environment. That may have something to do with what I believe about farming.'

'Grandpa, like most of the fun-loving gang who built the Plants, just wanted to die or have his brain turn to oatmeal before it becomes too apparent exactly what a nightmare he and his buddies have saddled their descendants with.'

'We call Jasmine's room 'The Harem,' a sexy place, about which Dan never complained, even though his own possessions, his laptop PC and briefcase, for example, looked crazy in the environment, invasive and overcomplex, like Stealth bombers in SmurfWorld.'

I mean five thousand years ago people emerge out of nowhere -- sproing!-- with brains and everything and begin wrecking the planet. You'd think we'd give the issue a little more thought than we do.

'Mister!', he said with a sawdusty sneeze, 'I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues, And I'm asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs' -- He was very upset as he shouted and puffed -- 'What's that THING you've made out of my Truffula tuft?'

Catch! calls the Once-ler. He lets something fall. It's a Truffula Seed. It's the last one of all! You're in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds. And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs. Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air. Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back.

Now all that was left 'neath the bad-smelling sky was my big empty factory... the Lorax... and I.

For conservation to be successful it is necessary to take into consideration that it is a characteristic of man that he can only be relied upon to do anything consistently which is in his own interest. He may have occasional fits of conscience and moral rectitude but otherwise his actions are governed by self-interest. It follows then that whatever the moral reasons for conservation it will only be achieved by the inducement of profit or pleasure.

Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species in the world. (1991)

Oh! You are the people ruining the rivers and the environment. (1999)

It was on the train,with its rattle-ty bang,that is often so stimulating to a composer that I suddenly heard the complete construction of the Rhapsody. Comment on his Blue Rhapsody composition.

We have come tardily to the tremendous task of cleaning up our environment. We should have moved with similar zeal at least a decade ago. But no purpose is served by post-mortems. With visionary zeal but the greatest realism, we must now address ourselves to the vast problems that confront us.

The blind conviction that we have to do something about other people's reproductive behaviour, and that we may have to do it whether they like it or not, derives from the assumption that the world belongs to us, who have so expertly depleted its resources, rather than to them, who have not.

I want to see my people educated and enlightened. A people with a vision and a strong sense of justice who can carve out a future for themselves, in harmony with nature.

From the cranberry cancer scare of the 1950s to the Alar-in-apples hysteria of the 1980s, from the 'new ice age' of the 1960s to the 'global warming' of the 1990s, environmental alarms almost always turn out to be false. Few non-political scientists fear ozone loss, global warming, or acid rain. These are just issues that some people hope to use to reorder the lives of the rest of us.

Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? - If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on? Grade the ground first. If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him ... he will be surrounded by grandeur. He is in the condition of a healthy and hungry man, who says to himself, - How sweet this crust is!

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.

As if our birth had at first sundered things, and we had been thrust up through into nature like a wedge, and not till the wound heals and the scar disappears, do we begin to discover where we are, and that nature is one and continuous everywhere.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!

Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted.

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough! It isn't fit for humans now, There isn't grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death!

How much longer, for instance, can we continue to crowd more and more people into this world? How much longer can we afford to wage senseless, destructive wars? How long can we permit the uncontrolled use of the earth's resources when there is no possibility of replacing them? Indeed, how long will it be before we have completely used up everything our lives depend on? These issues are the politics of the future. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have begun to spell out in substantive fashion the means by which we can control population growth, environmental problmes, and the conservation of our natural resources.

'How many of us are able to distinguish between the odors of noon and midnight, or of winter and summer, or of a windy spell and a still one? If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in the country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and smell and sound are less clearly marked and lost in the general monotony of gray walls and cement pavements.' (p. 129)

Our parents were kind of scared to let us outside of the house, because where we lived was pretty dangerous.

We are what we are, because of the vibrations of thought which we pick up and register, through the stimuli of our daily environment. Resolve to throw off the influences of any unfortunate environment, and to build your own life to ORDER.

It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.

My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.

I live in a 9 million dollar turd.

Our aims in political activism are not, and should not be, to create a perfect utopia. What we seek is more simply to improve the quality of human life while at the same time respecting the natural environment which sustains it: 'Not a heaven on earth but a better earth on earth.' This is not at all a timid agenda, far from it. The work ahead of us is enormous!

The distinction between indoors and outdoors, which in England is usually so marked, was temporarily suspended in a hot gauzy haze.

The little blonde at the PBX cocked a shell-like ear and smiled a small fluffy smile. She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don't care much about kittens.

The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become.

The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around.

From an environmental standpoint, here is Ron Paul saying that he would end all subsidies to oil, gas, and coal companies. Could you imagine Al Gore saying this? Mr. global warming himself wouldn't even call for such drastic measures... that's what Ron Paul is calling for, an end to supporting corporate welfare. This is Ralph Nader stuff.

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Natures inexhaustible sources of energy - sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.

There will presently be no room in the world for things; it will be filled up with the advertisements of things.

Ryokan, who shook off the modern vulgarity of his day, who was immersed in the elegance of earlier centuries, and whose poetry and calligraphy are much admired in Japan today - he lived in the spirit of these poems, a wanderer down country paths, a grass hut for shelter, rags for clothes, farmers to talk to. The profundity of religion and literature was not, for him, in the abstruse. He rather pursued literature and belief in the benign spirit summarized in the Buddhist phrase 'a smiling face and gentle words'. In his last poem he offered nothing as a legacy. He but hoped that after his death nature would remain beautiful. That could be his bequest.

What beauty. I saw clouds and their light shadows on the distant dear earth.... The water looked like darkish, slightly gleaming spots.... When I watched the horizon, I saw the abrupt, contrasting transition from the earth's light-colored surface to the absolutely black sky. I enjoyed the rich color spectrum of the earth. It is surrounded by a light blue aureole that gradually darkens, becoming turquiose, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black.

...man must accept responsibilities in proportion to his power and, if we are to exercise these responsibilities so that all life can continue on earth, they must have a moral and philosophical basis. Simple self-interest, economic profit and absolute materialism are no longer enough... It has been made perfectly clear that a concern for any part of life on this planet - human, plant or animal, wild or tame - is a concern for all life. A threat to any part of the environment is a threat to the whole environment, but we must have a basis of assessment of these threats, not so that we can establish a priority of fears, but so that we can make a positive contribution to improvement and ultimate survival.

A new criterion has been added, the conservation of the environment so that in the long run life, including human life, can continue. This new consideration must be taken into account at all levels and in all departments of government and in the boardrooms of every industrial enterprise. It is no longer sufficient simply to quantify the elements of existence as in old-fashioned material economics; conservation means taking notice of the quality of existence as well...The problem is of course to give some value to that quality and perhaps the only way to do this is to try and work out the cost in terms of loss of amenities, loss of holiday and recreation facilities, loss of property values, loss of contact with nature, loss of health standards and loss of food resources, if proper conservation methods are not used. Looked at in that light it may well turn out that money spent on proper pollution control, urban and rural planning and the control of exploitation of wild stocks of plants or animals on land and in the sea, is the less expensive alternative in the long run...The conservation of nature, the proper care for the human environment and a general concern for the long-term future of the whole of our planet are absolutely vital if future generations are to have a chance to enjoy their existence on this earth.

Earth is my home!

Why then be concerned about the conservation of wildlife when for all practical purposes we would be much better off if humans and their domestic animals and pets were the only living creatures on the face of the earth? There is no obvious and demolishing answer to this rather doubtful logic although in practice the destruction of all wild animals would certainly bring devastating changes to our existence on this planet as we know it today...The trouble is that everything in nature is completely interdependent. Tinker with one part of it and the repercussions ripple out in all directions...Wildlife - and that includes everything from microbes to blue whales and from a fungus to a redwood tree - has been so much part of life on the earth that we are inclined to take its continued existence for granted...Yet the wildlife of the world is disappearing, not because of a malicious and deliberate policy of slaughter and extermination, but simply because of a general and widespread ignorance and neglect.