quotations about environment
What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.
MAHATMA GANDHI
attributed, Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests
With the greenhouse in effect our environment was wrecked
Now I can only laugh as I read our epitaph
We end our lives as moles in the dark of the dawn patrol
MEGADETH
"Dawn Patrol", Rust in Peace
The Earth is what we all have in common.
WENDELL BERRY
The Art of the Commonplace
The truly healthy environment is not merely safe but stimulating.
WILLIAM H. STEWART
Environmental Science and Technology
We cannot permit the environmental movement to shut down the United States. We cannot shut down the lives of many Americans by going to the extreme on the environment.
GEORGE BUSH
campaign rally, May 30, 1992
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.
JOHN MUIR
My First Summer in the Sierra
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Familiar Letters
Is a park any better than a coal mine? What's a mountain got that a slag pile hasn't? What would you rather have in your garden--an almond tree or an oil well?
JEAN GIRAUDOUX
The Madwoman of Chaillot
Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom and lakes die.
GIL STERN
attributed, The Harper Book of Quotations
If you really think the environment is less important than the economy try holding your breathe while you count your money.
ANONYMOUS
The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.
GAYLORD NELSON
"Ah, Wilderness! Save It", The New York Times, September 4, 1984
If the environment permits it, anyone can learn whatever he chooses to learn; and if the individual permits it, the environment will teach him everything it has to teach.
VIOLA SPOLIN
Improvisation for the Theater
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.
WALLACE STEGNER
The Sound of Mountain Water
The struggle to save the global environment is in one way much more difficult than the struggle to vanquish Hitler, for this time the war is with ourselves. We are the enemy, just as we have only ourselves as allies. In a war such as this, then, what is victory and how will we recognize it?
AL GORE
Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit
I'm a product of my environment
My vocabulary's like licking the gutter
CIRCLE JERKS
"Product of My Environment"
Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,
For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.
America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,
And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.
GEORGE CARLIN
stand-up routine
I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos.
GEORGE CARLIN
"The Planet Is Fine"
It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.
OSCAR WILDE
De Profundis
While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil. Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
attributed, Land Use
Caring for the Earth is not a hippie thing, it's a survival thing.
ANONYMOUS