It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. ~ Ansel Adams

 

Let us be good stewards of the Earth we inherited. All of us have to share the Earth's fragile ecosystems and precious resources, and each of us has a role to play in preserving them. If we are to go on living together on this earth, we must all be responsible for it. ~ Kofi Annan

Waste is a tax on the whole people.
~ Albert W. Atwood

 

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

The American reading his Sunday paper in a state of lazy collapse is perhaps the most perfect symbol of the triumph of quantity over quality.... Whole forests are being ground into pulp daily to minister to our triviality.
~ Irving Babbitt

 

"The problem of climate change is so large that it can't be solved by voluntary individual responses. It requires an economy-wide solution, i.e. one that limits the total carbon intake of the economy." ~ Peter Barnes

"The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think."
~ Gregory Bateson

"This is a deeply spiritual issue...Do we want to spend more time trying to care for our fellow man or do we want to just pursue more virtual reality? That's the issue before us.. and it's being played out in the world of the environment."
~ Ed Begley, Jr.

"Kids can help the environment by riding a bike. Always wear a helmet of course and stay in the bike lane. Take public transportation with your parents and your friends and see if you like that. That’s a good way to get around. Start a home garden, be energy efficient, turn off the lights and the water. All of those things are very good for the environment and good for your pocketbook. "
~ Ed Begley, Jr.

"I was a Boy Scout, and scouting gave me an appreciation for nature and the outdoors that set the stage for my career as an environmental activist. The other thing would be growing up in Los Angeles-the smog capital of the world for quite a while."
~ Ed Begley, Jr.

The two most abundant forms of power on earth are solar and wind, and they're getting cheaper and cheaper…
~ Ed Begley, Jr.

 

"I can't imagine a right more basic than the right to breathe clean air. We've debated for years how that might be possible. Now that we know it is, will we have the courage and the conviction to get there?" ~ Ed Begley, Jr.

"The natural world is the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence." ~ Thomas Berry

"To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival." ~ Wendell Berry

We do need a 'new economy,' but one that is founded on thrift and care, on saving and conserving, not on excess and waste. An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product. We need a peaceable economy."
~ Wendell Berry

"The most unhappy thing about conservation is that it is never permanent. Save a priceless woodland or an irreplaceable mountain today, and tomorrow it is threatened from another quarter."
~ Hal Borland

Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man? . . . Does man have any responsibility for the preservation of a decent balance in nature, for the preservation of rare species, or even for the indefinite continuance of his race? ~ Kenneth E. Boulding With laissez-faire and price atomic, Ecology's Uneconomic, But with another kind of logic Economy's Unecologic. ~ Kenneth E. Boulding

"The land is sacred. These words are at the core of your being. The land is our mother, the rivers our blood. Take our land away and we die. That is, the Indian in us dies."
~ Mary Brave Bird

"If we go on as we are, we will destroy in the next century everything that the poets have been singing about for the past two thousand years."
~ Fred Bodsworth

"The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children."
~ Dietrick Bonhoeffer

There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual part of themselves, that heartfelt knowledge that we are caretakers of this planet.
~ Brooke Medicine Eagle

 

"The role of the market place is to be an instrument of environmental change and policy making. We are all consumers with a great potential for change. Environmental protection begins at home." ~ Noel Brown, Former Director of the UN Environmental Program

Our children may save us if they are taught to care properly for the planet; but if not, it may be back to the Ice Age or the caves from where we first emerged. Then we'll have to view the universe above from a cold, dark place. No more jet skis, nuclear weapons, plastic crap, broken pay phones, drugs, cars, waffle irons, or television. Come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea.
~ Jimmy Buffet

 

"We can use our scientific knowledge to improve and beautify the earth, or we can use it to ...poison the air, corrupt the waters, blacken the face of the country, and harass our souls with loud and discordant noises, [or]...we can use it to mitigate or abolish all these things." ~ John Burroughs

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.
~ John Burroughs

Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.
~ John Burroughs

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
~ John Burroughs

How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.
~ John Burroughs

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

 

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strengths that will endure as life lasts ~ Rachel Carson

The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are not reserved for scientists but are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea and sky and their amazing life.
~ Rachel Carson

For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.
~ Rachel Carson

The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world--the very nature of its life.
~ Rachel Carson

"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction."
~ Rachel Carson

 

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries. ~ Jimmy Carter "I want to make it clear,if there is ever a conflict (between environmental quality and economic growth), I will go for beauty, clean air, water, and landscape." ~ Jimmy Carter

Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this Nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our Nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.
~ Jimmy Carter

Acknowledging the physical realities of our planet does not mean a dismal future of endless sacrifice. In fact, acknowledging these realities is the first step in dealing with them. We can meet the resource problems of the world -- water, food, minerals, farmlands, forests, overpopulation, pollution -- if we tackle them with courage and foresight.
~ Jimmy Carter

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God. ~ George Washington Carver

Look about you. Take hold of the things that are here. Let them talk to you. You learn to talk to them.
~ George Washington Carver

Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.
~ George Washington Carver

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.
~ Anton Chekhov

 

"I have never believed we had to choose between either a clean and safe environment or a growing economy. Protecting the health and safety of all Americans doesn’t have to come at the expense of our economy’s bottom line. And creating thriving companies and new jobs doesn’t have to come at the expense of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, or the natural landscape in which we live. We can, and indeed must, have both." ~ Bill Clinton

 

"Most of us have become Ecozombies, desensitized, environmental deadheads. On average, society conditions us to spend over 95% of our time and 99.9% of our thinking disconnected from nature. Nature's extreme absence in our lives leaves us abandoned and wanting. We feel we never have enough. We greedily, destructively, consume and, can't stop. Nature's loss in our psyche produces a hurt, hungering, void within us that bullies us into our dilemmas."
~ Michael J. Cohen

As we gain satisfaction from artificial substitutes for nature we forget that there is no known substitute for Nature, the real thing and its eons of intelligent, life supportive, experience. Each substitute we create falls short of nature's balanced perfection, thus producing our pollution, garbage and relationship conflicts."
~ Michael J. Cohen

"Everything is connected to everything else. Everything must go somewhere. Nature knows best. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you don't put something in the ecology, it's not there."
~ Barry Commoner

"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

 

" There are no boundaries in the real Planet Earth. No United States, no Soviet Union, no China, no Taiwan.... Rivers flow unimpeded across the swaths of continents. The persistent tides -- the pulse of the sea -- do not discriminate; they push against all the varied shores on Earth." ~ Jacques Cousteau

"Is it too late to prevent us from self-destructing? No, for we have the capacity to design our own future, to take a lesson from living things around us and bring our values and actions in line with ecological necessity. But we must first realize that ecological and social and economic issues are all deeply intertwined. There can be no solution to one without a solution to the others." ~ Jean-Michel 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 can not be eaten.
~ Cree Indian Prophecy

"We go to sanctuaries to remember the things we hold most dear, the things we cherish and love. And then--the great challenge--we return home seeking to enact this wisdom as best we can in our daily lives."
~ William Cronon

 

"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

"There is something fundamentally wrong with treating the earth as if it were a business in liquidation." ~ Herman Daly

"...we all have an obligation as citizens of this earth to leave the world a healthier, cleaner, and better place for our children and future generations.” ~ Blythe Danner

“Can we really be so uncaring as a country to refuse to accept our responsibility for global warming when the United States is the largest contributor to this problem? It breaks my heart to read everyday of another environmental law that is being chipped away, eroded by this Administration, and we’re not being provided with incentives by Bush to cut back on our shameful waste of energy. My husband, Bruce, wrote in one PSA that during World War II the government asked everyone to make sacrifices for the common good. We must demand this of our Administration today for we all have an obligation as citizens of this earth to leave the world a healthier, cleaner, and better place for our children and future generations.”
~ Blythe Danner

I PLEDGE to live, work and act in a loving, respectful way towards this Earth that I call home, and towards all who live upon it, every insect, animal, fish, bird, plant, human and tree.... ~ Guy Dauncey

Today's world is one in which the age-old risks of humankind - the drought, floods, communicable diseases - are less of a problem than ever before. They have been replaced by risks of humanity's own making - the unintended side-effects of beneficial technologies and the intended effects of the technologies of war. Society must hope that the world's ability to assess and manage risks will keep pace with its ability to create them.
~ J. Clarence Davies

 

"Love the earth as you would love yourself." ~ John Denver "No one person has to do it all but if each one of us follow our heart and our own inclinations we will find the small things that we can do to create a sustainable future and a healthy environment." ~ John Denver

We must set an example now and move environmentalism from being the philosophy of a passionate minority ... to a way of life that automatically integrates ecology into governmental policy and normal living standards. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio

We've been given this gift, our planet, and we've found no other place in the universe that we can inhabit. I want to do something to create radical change to help save it. It's our responsibility.
~ Leonardo DiCaprio

As we progress into the twenty-first century, anyone who considers themselves a realist will have to make the environment a top priority.
~ Leonardo DiCaprio

Our planet's alarm is going off, and it is time to wake up and take action!
~ Leonardo DiCaprio

Our oil-based society depends on non-renewable resources. It requires relentless probing into vast reaches of pristine land, sacrificing vital bioregions, and irreplaceable cultures. The possibility of catastrophic climate change is substantially increased by the 40 million barrels of oil burned every day by vehicles. We must all move shoulder to shoulder in a unified front to show this administration that the true majority of people are willing to vote for a cleaner environment and won't back down.
~ Leonardo DiCaprio

I urge individuals around the world to stand up, and ask local leaders, if they haven't already, to pledge to purchase cleaner cars, build green facilities, and buy green power like wind or solar energy. Our actions may determine if we become a casualty in the war for a habitable planet for generations to come.
~ Leonardo DiCaprio

When I was very young, biology, the diversity of life, was one of my main interests. I know there's this image people have that I'm this spoiled, cocky punk of an actor. Honestly, that's not who I am. I really care that so many species have been wiped out, like genocide of entire races. I believe in the divine right of all species to survive on this planet. So I decided I want to be active as an environmentalist. I learned. I asked experts. I got active.
~ Leonardo DiCaprio

"The use of plant oil as fuel may seem insignificant today. But such products can in time become just as important as kerosene and these coal-tar-products of today." ~ Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, which originally ran on peanut oil.

"In the end, we conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."
~ Baba Dioum, Senegalese poet

"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

"I hope to be remembered as someone who made the earth a little more beautiful." ~ Justice William O. Douglas

I realized that Eastern thought had somewhat more compassion for all living things. Man was a form of life that in another reincarnation might possibly be a horsefly or a bird of paradise or a deer. So a man of such a faith, looking at animals, might be looking at old friends or ancestors. In the East the wilderness has no evil connotation; it is thought of as an expression of the unity and harmony of the universe.
~ Justice William O. Douglas

"The concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive ... the values it represents are spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary. It is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well balanced as well as carefully patroled."
~ Justice William O. Douglas

"Man shapes himself through decisions that shape his environment." ~ René Dubos

It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life.
~ René Dubos

"The belief that we can manage the Earth and improve on Nature is probably the ultimate expression of human conceit, but it has deep roots in the past and is almost universal."
~ René Dubos

Humanity, let us say, is like people packed in a automobile which is traveling downhill without lights at a terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old child. The signposts along the way are all marked "progress."
~ Lord Dunsany

"The great ecosystems are like complex tapestries - a million complicated threads, interwoven, make up the whole picture. Nature can cope with small rents in the fabric; it can even, after a time, cope with major disasters like floods, fires, and earthquakes. What nature cannot cope with is the steady undermining of its fabric by the activities of man."
~ Gerald Durrell

“If we have a hope of really understanding our place in nature and of carving out a place for ourselves that is sustainable, it’s primarily because of the new level of communication. It used to be, ‘What you don’t have in your mind, you have on your shelf.’ But now we have the Web.”
~ Sylvia Earle

 

We are all together in this, we are all together in this single living ecosystem called planet earth. As we learn how we fit into the greater scheme of things, and begin to understand how the system works, we can plan ahead, we can use the resources responsibly, to show some respect for this inheritance that goes back 4.6 billion years. ~ Sylvia Earle

We are in trouble now, unless we deliberately take actions to take care of the sea, and make sure these systems continue to operate as they have for millions of years.
~ Sylvia Earle

"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait 'til oil and coal run out before we tackle that."
~ Thomas Edison (1847–1931)

"Since natural resources are finite, increased consumption must inevitably lead to depletion and scarcity."
~ Paul Ehrlich

 

A human being is part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole [of] nature in its beauty. ~ Albert Einstein

"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

"To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The earth will continue to regenerate its life sources only as long as we and all the peoples of the world do our part to conserve its natural resources. It is a responsibility which every human being shares. Through voluntary action, each of us can join in building a productive land in harmony with nature."
~ Gerald Ford

 

"When we protect the places where the processes of life can flourish, we strengthen not only the future of medicine, agriculture and industry, but also the essential conditions for peace and prosperity." ~ Harrison Ford

"Our health relies entirely on the vitality of our fellow species on Earth."
~ Harrison Ford

Zoos are becoming facsimiles - or perhaps caricatures - of how animals once were in their natural habitat. If the right policies toward nature were pursued, we would need no zoos at all.
~ Michael Fox

 

Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

There's enough on this planet for everyone's needs but not for everyone's greed. ~ Mohandas Gandhi

"The main lesson to be learned from the Love Canal crisis is that in order to protect public health from chemical contamination, there needs to be a massive outcry--a choir of voices--by the American people demanding change." ~ Lois Gibbs

"The citizens of Love Canal provided an example of how a blue-collar community with few resources can win against great odds (a multi-billion-dollar international corporation and an unresponsive government), using the power of the people in our democratic system."
~ Lois Gibbs

"It will take a massive effort to move society from corporate domination, in which industry's rights to pollute and damage health and the environment supersede the public's right to live, work, and play in safety. This is a political fight. The science is already there, showing that people's health is at risk. To win, we will need to keep building the movement, networking with one another, planning, strategizing, and moving forward. Our children's futures, and those of their unborn children, are at stake."
~ Lois Gibbs

 

You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. ~ Jane Goodall

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

"The key.. will be a new public awareness of how serious is the threat to the global environment. Those who have a vested interest in the status quo will probably continue to be able to stifle any meaningful change until enough citizens.. are willing to speak out." ~ Al Gore

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.
~ Al Gore

"We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well - for we will not fight to save what we do not love."
~ Stephen Jay Gould

 

"The future belongs to those who understand that doing more with less is compassionate, prosperous, and enduring, and thus more intelligent, even competitive." ~ Paul Hawken

"I feel more confident than ever that the power to save the planet rests with the individual consumer." ~ Denis Hayes

"The sunshine that strikes American roads each year contains more energy than all the fossil fuels used by the entire world."
~ Denis Hayes

"An acre of windy prairie could produce between $4,000 and 10,000 worth of electricity per year – which is far more than the value of the land’s crop of corn or wheat."
~ Denis Hayes

"America has the technology and resources to meet all its energy needs while safeguarding the earth's climate. The urgent question now is, 'Do we have the will?' At least one city does, and I'm proud to live in it."
~ Denis Hayes

"Listen up, you couch potatoes: each recycled beer can saves enough electricity to run a television for three hours."
~ Denis Hayes

We can dream together a dream of a better world, an ever-renewing, organic-based earth-community. I believe we can achieve a large part of it in our lifetime. ~ Randy Hayes Economic policy turns out to be the most important environmental policy. ~ Randy Hayes I think our main foreign policy is economic policy but to think that economic policy is not environmental policy is to sort of, miss the point. You know you can't have economic development without impact on the biosphere. ~ Randy Hayes

"I wake up in the morning asking myself what can I do today, how can I help the world today." -- Julia Butterfly Hill

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

"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

 

"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

"While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"The American people have a right to air that they and their children can breathe without fear."
~ Lyndon Johnson

If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it."
~ President Lyndon B. Johnson

"No one has the right to use America's rivers and America's Waterways, that belong to all the people. as a sewer. The banks of a river may belong to one man or one industry or one State, but the waters which flow between the banks should belong to all the people."
~ Lyndon B. Johnson

We must not be forced to explore the universe in search of a new home because we have made the Earth inhospitable, even uninhabitable. For if we do not solve the environmental and related social problems that beset us on Earth - pollution, toxic contamination, resource depletion, prejudice, poverty, hunger - those problems will surely accompany us to other worlds.
~ Donald G. Kaufman and Cecilia M. Franz

"With our technologies--ones of incalcuable power: earth-restoring, planet preserving--we can rediscover an intimacy, a mutuality with the natural world, that is not primitive (though based in part on fear), but knowing. It might even be possible to relearn a life of awe. And inhabit the landscape without violation. With the least violation."
~ Janet Kauffman

"Solar is cost effective right now. When you consider the cost to our health from air pollution, solar is just as competitive as any other energy source."
~ Thomas P. Kay

 

"The Supreme Reality of Our Time is...the Vulnerability of our Planet" ~ John F. Kennedy "It is our task in our time and in our generation, to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours." ~ John F. Kennedy

"We in Government have begun to recognize the critical work which must be done at all levels—local, State and Federal—in ending the pollution of our waters." ~ Robert F. Kennedy

"We protect nature not for nature's sake but for our own sake because it's the infrastructure of our communities..." ~ Robert Kennedy, Jr.

"What we are fighting for is not just the fishes and the birds. We protect nature not for nature's sake but for our own sake because it's the infrastructure of our communities, and if we want to meet the obligations of our civilization and our culture which are to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment as the communities that our parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting that infrastructure; the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the landscapes that enrich us. We're not protecting nature for nature's sake. We're protecting it because it enriches us, yes, it enriches our economy and we ignore that at our peril. But it is also enriching us aesthetically, recreationally, culturally, historically and spiritually. Human beings have other appetites besides money. And if we don't feed them, we're not going to grow up…we're not going to become the kind of beings that our creator intended us to become."
~ Robert Kennedy, Jr.

The environment is the most important, the most fundamental, civil-rights issue.... Four out of every five toxic-waste dumps in America is in a black neighborhood.
~ Robert Kennedy, Jr.

I don't even consider myself an environmentalist anymore. I'm a free-marketer. I go out into the marketplace and I catch the polluters who are cheating the free market...
~ Robert Kennedy, Jr.

We are living in a science-fiction nightmare where children are gasping for breath on bad-air days because somebody gave money to a politician. And my children and the kids of millions of other Americans can no longer go fishing and eat their catch because somebody gave money to a politician.
~ Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Waste not the smallest thing created, for grains of sand make mountains, and atomies infinity.
~ E. Knight

"If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers."
~ Joseph Wood Krutch

 

"In the area of species protection, we should concern ourselves with what is right as opposed to what might be easier, or popular in the short term." ~ Richard Leakey

That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics. ~ Aldo Leopold

"Having to squeeze the last drop of utility out of the land has the same desperate finality as having to chop up the furniture to keep warm."
~ Aldo Leopold

"Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land."
~ 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

"Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech."
~ Aldo Leopold

"All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. . . . The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land."
~ Aldo Leopold

We have always had reluctance to see a tract of land which is empty of men as anything but a void. The "waste howling wilderness" of Deuteronomy is typical. The Oxford Dictionary defines wilderness as wild or uncultivated land which is occupied "only" by wild animals. Places not used by us are "wastes." Areas not occupied by us are "desolate." Could the desolation be in the soul of man?
~ John A. Livingston

"Rely on renewable energy flows that are always there whether we use them or not, such as, sun, wind and vegetation: on energy income, not depletable energy capital."
~ Amory Lovins

"The environment isn't over here. The environment isn't over there. You are the environment."
~ Chief Oren Lyons

"If you have a clean environment, you will have a healthy atmosphere. This will make you happy and your happiness will bring joy to your parents and it will affect the community, too. Then there will be peace of mind to one and all."
~ Chief Oren Lyons

We can still alter our course. It is NOT too late. We still have options. We need the courage to change our values to the regeneration of our families, the life that surrounds us.
~ Chief Oren Lyons

 

"The young generation can influence their elders and can make them understand the environmental problems that are faced by us today. The youth can make them see that our environment is deteriorating day by day." ~ Chief Oren Lyons

"If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear. People who can open to the web of life that called us into being".
~ Joanna Macy

"Every one of us can make a contribution. And quite often we are looking for the big things and forget that, wherever we are, we can make a contribution. Sometimes I tell myself, I may only be planting a tree here, but just imagine what's happening if there are billions of people out there doing something. Just imagine the power of what we can do." ~ Wangari Maathai

"It is wrong to suppose the world was created primarily to serve mankind's purposes and pleasures. A conviction about having dominion over land and water and living things breeds ideas of unwarranted self importance. It is a sobering thought that man's place in Nature's scheme is, after all, a small one."
~ J. Grant MacEwan

"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

"Let us pledge our lives and fortunes to aid the great task of Earth's rejuvenation, and with confidence and faith, each do our part as a trustee of Earth to take charge and take care of our planet." ~ John McConnell, the Founder of Earth Day

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

EARTH DAY reminds the people of the world of the need for continuing care which is vital to Earth’s safety. ~ Margaret Mead

"We won't have a society if we destroy the environment"
~ Margaret Mead

"EARTH DAY uses one of humanity’s great discoveries, the discovery of anniversaries by which, throughout time, human beings have kept their sorrows and their joys, their victories, their revelations and their obligations alive, for re-celebration and re-dedication another year, another decade, another century, another eon. EARTH DAY reminds the people of the world of the need for continuing care which is vital to Earth’s safety. …EARTH DAY draws on astronomical phenomena in a new way; using the vernal equinox, the time when the Sun crosses the equator making night and day of equal length in all parts of theEarth. To this point in the annual calendar, EARTH DAY attaches no local or divisive set of symbols, no statement of the truth or superiority of one way of life over another. But the selection of the March equinox makes planetary observance of a shared event possible. The vernal equinox calls on all mankind to recognize and respect Earth’s beautiful systems of balance, between the presence of animals on land, the fish in the sea, birds in the air, mankind, water, air, and land. Most importantly there must always be awareness of the actions by people that can disturb this precious balance."
~ Margaret Mead

 

Basically we should stop doing those things that are destructive to the environment, other creatures, and ourselves and figure out new ways of existing. -- Moby

Arbor Day is not like other holidays. Each of those reposes on the past, while Arbor Day proposes for the future."
~ J. Sterling Morton, Founder of Arbor Day

"The cultivation of trees is the cultivation of the good, the beautiful, and the ennobling in man, and for one, I wish to see it become universal."
~ J. Sterling Morton, Founder of Arbor Day

 

"Each generation takes the earth as trustees. We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed." ~ J. Sterling Morton, Founder of Arbor Day

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." ~ John Muir

"The battle we have fought, and are still fighting for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong, and we cannot expect to see the end of it ... So we must count on watching and striving for these trees, and should always be glad to find anything so surely good and noble to strive for."
~ John Muir

The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun. ~ Ralph Nader

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
~ Native American Proverb

"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our children."
~ Native American Proverb

 

"The fate of the living planet is the most important issue facing mankind." ~ Gaylord Nelson

When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves.
~ David Orr

"Modern Society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyles."
~ Pope John Paul II (Polish Pope. 1920-2005)

The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.
~ Ross Perot

 

The environmental movement has led some of the most successful global campaigns in terms of raising public and political consciousness about the relationship of environment and development and offering alternatives for better governance at all levels from community to the international arena. ~ Michele Perrault

Racial injustice, war, urban blight, and environmental rape have a common denominator in our exploitative economic system.
~ Channing E. Phillips

"The purpose of conservation: The greatest good to the greatest number of people for the longest time."
~ Gifford Pinchot, first Director of the U.S. Forest Service