"We
have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the
earth as its other creatures do."
- Barbara Ward, Only One Earth, 1972. |
"Never,
no never, did nature say one thing and wisdom say another."
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Letters on a
Regicide Peace, 1797. |
"The
most unhappy thing about conservation is that it is never permanent.
If we save a priceless woodland today, it is threatened from another
quarter tomorrow."
- Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890-1998), quoted
in Facing Florida's Environmental Future, April 1990. |
"If
we use resources productively and take to heart the lessons learned
from coping with the energy crisis, we face a future confronted
only, as Pogo, once said, by insurmountable opportunities. The many
crises facing us should be seen, then, not as threats, but as chances
to remake the future so it serves all beings."
- L. Hunter Lovins and Amory B. Lovins, Utne
Reader, November-December, 1989. |
"The
famous balance of nature is the most extraordinary of all cybernetic
systems. Left to itself, it is always self-regulated."
- Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970), Saturday
Review, June 8, 1963. |
"To
be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be
human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate
from."
- Terry Tempest Williams, testimony before
the Senate Subcommittee on Forest & Public Lands Management
regarding the Utah Public Lands Management Act of 1995. Washington,
D.C. July 13, 1995. |
"Nature
is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty."
- John Ruskin, (1819-1900). |
"Nature
provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites."
- William Ruckelshaus, first EPA Adminstrator,
(1970-1973 and 1983-1985), Business Week, June 18, 1990. |
"There
must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must
have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see
people throwing away things we could use."
- Mother Teresa (1910-1997), A Gift for
God, 1975. |
"Trees
are contagious; as soon as one neighborhood or street is planted,
citizen pressure builds up for action from the next street."
- William H. Whyte, The Last Landscape,
1968 |
"All
nature wears one universal grin."
- Henry Fielding (1707-1754), Tom Thumb
the Great, 1730. |
"The
silence of a shut park does not sound like the country silence;
it is tense and confined."
- Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), The Death
of the Heart, 1938. |
"The
forest stretched no living man knew how far."
- Willa Cather (1873-1947), Shadows on
the Rock, 1931. |
"Source
Reduction is to garbage what preventive medicine is to health."
- William L. Rathje, Atlantic Monthly,
December 1989. |
"The
weight of our civilization has become so great, it now ranks as
a global force and a significant wild card in the human future along
with the Ice Ages and other vicissitudes of a volatile and changeable
planetary system"
- Dianne Dumanoski, Rethinking Environmentalism,
December 13, 1998. |
"Environmentalists
have long been fond of saying that the sun is the only safe nuclear
reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away."
- Stephanie Mills ed., In Praise of Nature,
1990. |
"Mountains
are earth's undecaying monuments."
- Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), The
Notch of the White Mountains, 1868. |
"Adapt
or perish, now as ever, is Nature's inexorable imperative."
- H.G. Wells (1866-1946), Mind at the
End of Its Tether, 1945 |
"Environmentally
friendly cars will soon cease to be an option...they
will become a necessity."
- Fujio Cho, President of Toyota Motors, North
American International
Auto Show, 2004. |
"Nature
provides exceptions to every rule."
- Margaret Fuller, The Dial, July 1843. |
"Water
is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is
also a third thing, that makes it water and nobody knows what that
is."
- D.H. Lawrence, (1885-1930), Pansies,
1929. |
"We
owe our lives to the sun... How is it, then, that we feel no gratitude?"
- Lewis Thomas, Earth Ethics, Summer
1990. |
"A
city, like a living thing, is a united and continuous whole."
- Plutarch (approximately AD 50-120), Moralia. |
"The
Law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for
nothing, but we refuse to believe it."
- Isaac Asimov from Isaac Asimov's Book
of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988. |
"Until
man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called
scientific knowledge."
- Thomas Edison |
"The
Materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their
natural and unaided productions."
- Daniel Webster, (1782-1852) remarks in the
US Senate, March 12, 1838. |
"The
Truly Healthy environment is not merely safe but stimulating."
- William H. Stewart, Environmental Science
and Technology, February 1968. |
"Away,
away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs, --
To the silent wilderness,
Where the soul need not repress
Its music."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, (1792-1822), "To Jane, The
Invitation," c.1820
|
"For
many of us, water simply flows from a faucet, and we think little
about it beyond this point of contact. We have lost a sense of respect
for the wild river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for the
intricate web of life that water supports."
- Sandra Postel, Last Oasis: Facing Water
Scarcity, 2003. |
"The Silence of a shut park does not sound like the country
silence: it is tense and confirmed."
- Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), The Death
of the Heart. |
"Let
the river roll which way it will, cities will rise on its banks."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, (1803-1882) - Journals, 1988. |
"He
who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters,
the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments,
is the rich and royal man."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Essays, Second Series,
1844
|
"A
Healthy Ecology is the Basis for a Healthy Economy"
- Claudine Schneider, U.S. Representative
in The Green Lifestyle Handbook. |
"It
is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose
should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life.
But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to
exist; the threat is rather to life itself."
- Rachel Carson, (1907-1964) The Sea Around Us, 1951
|
"I
think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree."
- Joyce Kilmer, (1886-1918),
"Trees" - 1914. |
"You
cannot affirm the power plant and condemn the smokestack, or affirm
the smoke and condemn the cough"
- Wendell Berry, The Gift of the Good Land,
1981. |
"Nature
never did betray
The Heart that Loved her."
- William Wordsworth, (1770-1850),
"Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" - 1798. |
"When
the well's dry, we know the worth of water."
- Benjamin Franklin, (1706-1790), Poor Richard's Almanac.
|
"One Touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Troilus
and Cressida. |
"How
Strange that Nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!"
- Emily Dickinson, (1830-1886), Letter to Mrs. J.S.
Cooper. |
"The Wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent
homes of the human spirit."
- Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970), Today
and All Its Yesterdays, 1958. |
"We
will look upon the earth and her sister planets as being with us,
not for us."
- Mary Daly, "Beyond God the Father"
1973. |
"Never
doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change
the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead (1901-1978) quoted in John M. RIchardson,
ed. Making it Happen, 1982
|
"Nature,
even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by
the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) A Week on the Concord
and Merrimack Rivers, 1849 |
"To
halt the decline of an ecosystem, it is necessary to think like
an ecosystem."
- Douglas P. Wheeler, EPA Journal, September-October
1990 |
"It
is in man's heart that the life of nature's spectacle exists; to
see it, one must feel it."
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Emile, 1762 |
"If
there is magic on the planet, it is contained in Water."
- Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey, 1957. |
"The
use of sea and air is common to all; neither can a title to the
ocean belong to any people or private persons, forasmuch as neither
nature nor public use and custom permit any possession therof."
-Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603) |
"The
life of every river sings its own song, but in most the song is
long marred by the discords of misuse."
- Aldo Leopold (1886-1948), Sand County Almanac. |
"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, former governor of Wisconsin, founder
of Earth Day |
"Earth
provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's
greed."
- Mohandas K. Gandhi quoted in EF Schumacher, Small
is Beautiful. |
"The
air, the water and the ground are free gifts to man and no one has
the power to portion them out in parcels. Man must drink and breathe
and walk and therefore each man has a right to his share of each."
- James Fennimore Cooper (1789-1851), The Prairie 1827 |
"Let
the clean air blow the cobwebs from your body. Air is medicine."
- Lillian Russell (1862-1922), quoted in Reader's
Digest, March 1922 |
"It
is our collective and individual responsibility to protect and nurture
the global family, to support its weaker members and to preserve
and tend to the environment in which we all live."
- Dalai Lama |
I've
known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of
human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.-
- Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers,"
1926 |
"Water
is the best of all things."
- Pindar (c. 522 BC - c. 438 BC), Olympian Odes |