quotations about environment
Global warming isn't real because I was cold today! Also great news: world hunger is over because I just ate.
STEPHEN COLBERT
The Colbert Report
The earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations. I urge you to be sensitive to the many issues affecting the land and the whole environment, and to unite with each other to seek the best solutions to these pressing problems.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Unity in the Work of Service
I am I plus my surroundings and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself.
JOSé ORTEGA Y GASSET
Meditations on Quixote
Even when the pioneer didn't rape Nature, he divorced her a little too easily: he missed the great lesson that both ecology and medicine teach - that Man's great mission is not to conquer nature by main force but to cooperate with her intelligently but lovingly for his own purposes.
LEWIS MUMFORD
"California and the Human Prospect", Sierra Club Bulletin, 1962
Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease.
ANDY & LARRY WACHOWSKI
The Matrix
The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
letter to state governors, Feb. 26, 1937
Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you.
W. CLEMENT STONE
attributed, The Back Pain Chronicles
For an introvert his environment is himself and can never be subject to startling or unforeseen change.
QUENTIN CRISP
The Naked Civil Servant
The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.
ROBERT SWAN
attributed, The Disappearing Beach and Other Nature Stories
No settled family or community has ever called its home place an "environment." None has ever called its feeling for its home place "biocentric" or "anthropocentric." None has ever thought of its connection to its home place as "ecological," deep or shallow. The concepts and insights of the ecologists are of great usefulness in our predicament, and we can hardly escape the need to speak of "ecology" and "ecosystems." But the terms themselves are culturally sterile. They come from the juiceless, abstract intellectuality of the universities which was invented to disconnect, displace, and disembody the mind. The real names of the environment are the names of rivers and river valleys; creeks, ridges, and mountains; towns and cities; lakes, woodlands, lanes roads, creatures, and people.
WENDELL BERRY
Sex
The truth is: the natural world is changing. And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to defend it.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH
The Guardian, October 27, 2012
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.
GERALD R. FORD
Earth Day address in Grand Rapids, Michigan, April 22, 1970
As much as you like to control your environment
The reality is, everything changes
DISCLOSURE
"Intro", Settle
We are living on the planet as if we have another one to go to.
TERRY SWEARINGEN
"40 Best Environmental Quotes To Inspire You To Do Your Part To Save The Earth", Your Tango
If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
The Book of Hours
Cities are expanding at an alarming rate. Inter-tidal zones are being polluted as mangroves gives way to marina. Over-consumption is leading to soil erosion and desertification, which in turn cause famine and exert pressure on formally fertile areas. We are pulling out the plugs of the system that keeps us alive. Every indicator is showing red: species diversity, water quality, weather patterns, the number of refugees.... We are unravelling nature like an old jumper.
PENNY KEMP & DEREK WALL
A Green Manifesto for the 1990s
When the last tree is cut and the last fish killed, the last river poisoned, then you will see that you can't eat money.
JOHN MAY
The Greenpeace Story
And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: "Look at this Godawful mess."
ART BUCHWALD
Down the Seine and Up the Potomac with Art Buchwald
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.
ALDO LEOPOLD
A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River
What a man can be is born with him; what he becomes is a result of his environment.
AMERICAN PROVERB