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The following are some famous environmental quotes centered on the theme of environmental security, environmental policy, environmental law, and technology. If you would like to go to the online environmental forum Click Here.
“I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?”
- Robert Redford
“The difficulty lies not in the new ideas but in the escaping the old ones.”
- John Maynard Keynes
“It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.”
- Ansel Adams
“If politics and business fail us, of course the military will be called in. In the developing world, the massive and repeated ecological disasters are quite commonly met by the military.”
- Bruce Sterling
“You can't get a guarantee that genes are going to turn on and off the way you want them to. You're dealing with life. It's too unpredictable.”
- Jeremy Rifkin
“What pleases me most is that sustainable development is on almost everybody's agenda now.”
- Maurice Strong
“I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.
“Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the "environmentalist" view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.”
- E. O. Wilson
“Government needs to be at least as good as any other sector in communication, and arguably should set new standards. It ought to be a sensitive and comprehensive listener. It must be an efficient and prompt disseminator of information. It has to answer questions accurately, honestly and completely. It must be accountable for what it does, prepared to explain and defend its decisions but also admit its mistakes.”
- The Phillis Report
“The overall view of the human genome project has been one of great excitement and positive press, but there are people who have concerns that are quite reasonable, and they are frightened of things they don't understand.”
- Thomas R. Cech
“The medium, or process, of our time - electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted. Everything is changing: you, your family, your education, your neighborhood, your job, your government, your relation to 'the others'. And they're changing dramatically.”
- Marshall McLuhan
“There is an increasing need to democratise the governance of science and technology, ensuring that it serves the public good rather than narrow economic interests.”
- Dr. Michel Pimbert
“In making any law, our chiefs must always consider three things: the effect of their decision on peace; the effect on the natural world; and the effect on seven generations in the future. We believe that all lawmakers should be required to think this way, that all constitutions should contain these rules.”
- Carol Jacobs
“There are two principles inherent in the very nature of things, recurring in some particular embodiments whatever field we explore - the spirit of change, and the spirit of conservation. There can be nothing real without both. Mere change without conservation is a passage from nothing to nothing. Mere conservation without change cannot conserve. For after all, there is a flux of circumstance, and the freshness of being evaporates under mere repetition.”
- Alfred North Whitehead
“Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next ten.”
- Neil Armstrong
“It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and reality of tomorrow.”
- Robert Goddard
“Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.”
- King James Bible, Proverb 29:18
“We must go through a natural revolution if we are to survive on earth. We need to change people's perceptions. If there's no environment, there's no human race. We are in a state of global denial.”
- Ted Turner
“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”
- Jane Goodall
“We seek a restorative justice, not a retributive
justice”
- Bishop Tutu
“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”
- Richard P. Feynman
“Through our reactions we create delusions. Without reactions the world becomes clear.”
- Buddha
“Nations whose feeling for nature dissipates because they destroy their homeland, carry the seeds of death in them; they only continue as a nation artificially. Nations with a strongly defined feeling for nature, like the Germans and the Slavs, overcome even the hardest blows and have an unlimited capacity for regeneration. Therefore a government that seeks to maintain the feeling for nature of its people is smart, and to that end no sacrifice is too large, no means too small, and everyone who helps with that serves his Völk.”
- Hermann Löns
“Nothing destroys authority so much as the unequal and untimely interchange of power, pressed too far and relaxed too much.”
- Francis Bacon
“Every good movement passes through five stages, indifference, ridicule, abuse, repression, and respect.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
“This is a country which stands tallest in troubled times, a country that clings to fundamental principles, cherishes its constitutional heritage, and rejects simple solutions that compromise the values that lie at the roots of our democratic system.”
- Thurgood Marshall
“Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.”
- David Attenborough
“You must stick to your conviction, but be ready to abandon your assumptions.”
- Denis Waitley
“The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.”
- Jacques Yves Cousteau
“Right now over 70 percent of the world population is convinced that something serious has to be done about the dangers facing the planet. Most of humanity wants to know how to make the change. It's one of those tipping-point times where things can change unbelievably fast.”
- Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson
“Upwards of two hundred species.. mostly of the large, slow-breeding variety.. are becoming extinct here every day because more and more of the earth's carrying capacity is systematically being converted into human carrying capacity. These species are being burnt out, starved out, and squeezed out of existence.. thanks to technologies that most people, I'm afraid, think of as technologies of peace. I hope it will not be too long before the technologies that support our population explosion begin to be perceived as no less hazardous to the future of life on this planet than the endless production of radioactive wastes.”
- Daniel Quinn
“All our leaders now call themselves environmentalists. But their brand of environmentalism poses very few challenges to the present system. Instead they propose to spruce up the planet wit a few technical fixes or individual lifestyle changes: scrubbers on coal plants, eating 'all-natural' cereals, and so on.”
- Ivan Illich
“The leadership of our National Socialist state and our conception of a people [Volk] is penetrated and inspired by foundations in biology. Legal provisions are derived from the laws of life. Their worth proceeds from the degree to which they are thought through in biological terms and on biological foundations.”
- Walter Greit
“While we can rely on technology to compensate for depletion of certain kinds of natural resources, we cannot rely on technological progress to increase the supply of natural environments which yield utility through direct personal contact.”
- John V. Kurtilia
“The Endangered Species Act is the strongest and most effective tool we have to repair the environmental harm that is causing a species to decline.”
- Norm Dicks
“The environmental movement, like all political processes, reacts best to disasters. But these are very slow, very gradual disasters in the making.”
- Ted Danson
“The methods that Environmental Protection Agency introduced after 1970 to reduce air-pollutant emissions worked for a while, but over time have become progressively less effective.”
- Barry Commoner
“I do not know of any environmental group in any country that does not view its government as an adversary.”
- Gro Harlem Brundtland
“The media is too concentrated, too few people own too much. There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear. It's not healthy.”
- Ted Turner
“You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.”
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Achieving sustainable development is perhaps one of the most difficult and one of the most pressing goals we face. It requires on the part of all of us commitment, action, partnerships and, sometimes, sacrifices of our traditional life patterns and personal interests.”
- Mostafa Tolba
“The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology.”
- E.F. Schumacher
“With great power there must also come great responsibility.”
- Stan Lee
“The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations-great or small-to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to, to be a part of the twentieth century.”
- Adlai E. Stevenson
“Good government starts when all parties agree to come to the table. It is achieved when all parties agree to compromise.”
- Jim Slinsky
“When it comes to human and environmental safety, there should be clear evidence of the absence of risks; the mere absence of evidence is not enough.”
- Conrad Brunk
“No important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions. The proof that conservation has not yet touched these foundations of conduct lies in the fact that philosophy and religion have not yet heard of it. In our attempt to make conservation easy, we have made it trivial.”
- Aldo Leopold
“What is a fish without a river? What is a bird without a tree to nest in? What is an Endangered Species Act without any enforcement mechanism to ensure their habitat is protected? It is nothing.”
- Jay Inslee
“Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”
- Thomas Carlyle
“The United Nations is our one great hope for a peaceful and free world.”
- Ralph Bunche
“I believe in justice and truth, without which there would be no basis for human hope.”
- Dalai Lama: Tenzin Gyatso
“We must set an example now and move environmentalism from being the philosophy of a passionate minority like everyone here at Earth Day to a way of life that automatically integrates ecology into governmental policy and normal living standards.”
- Leonardo DiCaprio
“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.
“This is a beautiful planet and not at all fragile. Earth can withstand significant volcanic eruptions, tectonic cataclysms, and ice ages. But this canny, intelligent, prolific, and extremely self-centered human creature had proven himself capable of more destruction of life than Mother Nature herself.... We've got to be stopped.”
- Michael L. Fischer
“The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge, but all economies know that the only sensible long term way of developing is to do it on a sustainable basis.”
- Tony Blair
“Years ago, we all talked about recycling and not dumping things down your drain and all of that, but talking doesn't help much. Basically, it's going to have to be legislation because the impact is so huge and diversified.”
- Ted Danson
“You go into a community and they will vote 80 percent to 20 percent in favor of a tougher Clean Air Act, but if you ask them to devote 20 minutes a year to having their car emissions inspected, they will vote 80 to 20 against it. We are a long way in this country from taking individual responsibility for the environmental problem.”
- William D. Ruckelshaus
“Any powerful technology can be abused.”
- K. Eric Drexler
“The high prices also highlight the fact that the U.S. is too heavily dependent on fossil fuels that we import from unstable parts of the world. To protect our national security, we must become more energy secure.”
- Dan Lipinski
“The state of any county's environment is a reflection of the kind of governance in place, and without good governance there can be no peace.”
- Wangari Maathai
“The environment is man’s first right. Without a safe environment, man cannot exist to claim other rights, be they political, social, or economic.”
- Dean Rusk
“We find ourselves ethically destitute just when, for the first time, we are faced with ultimacy, the irreversible closing down of the earth's functioning in its major life systems. Our ethical traditions know how to deal with suicide, homicide and even genocide, but these traditions collapse entirely when confronted with biocide, the killing of the life systems of the earth, and geocide, the devastation of the earth itself.”
- Father Thomas Berry
“The National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society focus most of their resources on research and treatment rather than on cancer prevention. By talking as if the cure is around the corner and their "war on cancer" is being won, when certain cancer rates—notably breast cancer and lung cancer among women and malignant melanoma—are on the rise, they divert attention from strict regulation of industry and minimizing people's exposure to carcinogens.”
- H. Patricia Hynes
“Poverty must be reduced not only for reasons of moral and justice, but also of security.”
- Anna Lindh
“We should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems, and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have the right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.”
- Albert Einstein
“Those who develop the technologies, who promote them and stand to profit most from them, are not those who suffer their risks. The analysis of technologies is biased toward their use because the technology promoters generally lack the expertise and the incentive to analyze the risks of the technologies for human health and the environment.”
- H. Patricia Hynes
“The important thing is not to stop questioning.”
- Albert Einstein
“When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.”
- Will Durant
“The heart of the security agenda is protecting lives - and we now know that the number of people who will die of AIDS in the first decade of the 21st Century will rival the number that died in all the wars in all the decades of the 20th century.”
- Al Gore
“The need for tax shifting—lowering income taxes while raising taxes on environmentally destructive activities—in order to get the market to tell the truth has been widely endorsed by economists.... The Economist [magazine] has recognized the advantage of environmental tax shifting and endorses it strongly: ‘On environmental grounds, never mind energy security, America taxes gasoline too lightly. Better than a one-off increase, a politically more feasible idea, and desirable in its own terms, would be a long-term plan to shift taxes from incomes to emissions of carbon.’”
- Lester Brown
“Civilization is in no immediate danger of running out of energy or even just out of oil. But we are running out of environment—that is, out of the capacity of the environment to absorb energy's impacts without risk of intolerable disruption—and our heavy dependence on oil in particular entails not only environmental but also economic and political liabilities.”
- Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran
“Global conditions are far too complex to be able to imagine that they could ever be really controlled by one power.”
- Ulrich Beck
“We're not trying to reinvent the wheel; for any environmental organization to claim sole responsibility for any kind of victory is insane, because everybody attacks these problems as a group.”
- Ted Danson
“The good news is we know what to do. The good news is, we have everything we need now to respond to the challenge of global warming. We have all the technologies we need; more are being developed. And as they become available and become more affordable when produced in scale, they will make it easier to respond. But we should not wait, we cannot wait, we must not wait.”
- Al Gore
“Ravaged, infertile lands, famine and drought are a reflection of impoverished petty minds and a demoralized spirit.”
- Paulo Lugari
“If there is a conflict between the security of the sovereign state and the security of the human commonwealth, the human commonwealth comes first. If there is a conflict between the well-being of the nation and the well-being of humanity, the well-being of humanity comes first. If there is a conflict between the needs of this generation and the needs of all later generations, the needs of the later generations come first. If there is a conflict between public edict and private conscience, private conscience comes first. If there is a conflict between the easy drift of prosperity and the ordeal of peace, the ordeal of peace comes first.”
- Norman Cousins
“There's no other way around. You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way.”
- Hans Blix
“How do commercial interests usually protect themselves from liability claims? Through insurance. In fact, in our society, the litmus test for safety is insurance. You can be insured for almost anything if you pay enough for the premium, but if the insurance industry isn't willing to bet its money on the safety of biotechnology, it means the risks are simply too high or too uncertain for them to take the gamble.”
- David Suzuki
“Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.”
- Dwight David Eisenhower
“Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline - which prevented it from entering the environment.”
- Barry Commoner
“The wheel is an extension of the foot, the book is an extension of the eye, clothing, an extension of the skin, electric circuitry, an extension of the central nervous system.”
- Marshall McLuhan
“US academic institutions are being 'bought' (via funding) by biotechnology firms which exert a vice-like grip on the US government.”
- Ignacio Chapela
“I think that the 10-year experiment with genetically engineered foods and genetically engineered animals and drugs is nearly over. We're going to look back at a certain point and say, ‘Oh my god, we wasted an entire decade fighting about this when the debate should have been about chemical-intensive agriculture vs. organic agriculture.’”
- Ronnie Cummins
“Environmental policy must strike a balance between the earth's best interests and our citizen's pressing needs.”
- Jim Clyburn
“It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions. It is necessary to change and improve our understanding of the true purpose of what we are and what we do in the world. Only such a new understanding will allow us to develop new models of behavior, new scales of values and goals, and thereby invest the global regulations, treaties and institutions with a new spirit and meaning.”
- Vaclav Havel
“Let every individual and institution now think and act as a responsible trustee of Earth, seeking choices in ecology, economics and ethics that will provide a sustainable future, eliminate pollution, poverty and violence, awaken the wonder of life and foster peaceful progress in the human adventure.”
- John McConnell
“The survival of the world depends upon our sharing what we have and working together. if we don't, the whole world will die. First the planet, and next the people.”
- Fools Crow
“Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.”
- Steward L. Udall
“We were making the first step out of the age of chemistry and physics, and into the age of biology.”
- Jeremy Rifkin
“All we can hope for is that the thing is going to slowly and imperceptibly shift. All I can say is that 50 years ago there were no such thing as environmental policies.”
- David Attenborough
“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”
- John Cage
“A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.”
- Jean Rostand
“Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge.”
- Thomas Edison
“It is possible to regulate watercourses over any given distance without embankment works; to transport timber and other materials, even when heavier than water, for example ore, stones, etc., down the centre of such water-courses; to raise the height of the water table in the surrounding countryside and to endow the water with all those elements necessary for the prevailing vegetation. Furthermore it is possible in this way to render timber and other such materials non-inflammable and rot resistant; to produce drinking and spa-water for man, beast and soil of any desired composition and performance artificially, but in the way that it occurs in Nature; to raise water in a vertical pipe without pumping devices; to produce any amount of electricity and radiant energy almost without cost; to raise soil quality and to heal cancer, tuberculosis and a variety of nervous disorders. The practical implementation of this would without doubt signify a complete reorientation in all areas of science and technology.”
- Viktor Schauberger
“During my nearly five years as director-general of WHO, high-level policymakers have increasingly recognized that health is central to sustainable development.”
- Gro H. Brundtland
“We can drift along as though there were still a cold war, wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons that will never be used, ignoring the problems of people in this country and around the world, being one of the worst environmental violators on earth, standing against any sort of viable programs to protect the world's forests or to cut down on acid rain or the global warming or ozone depletion. We can ignore human rights violations in other countries, or we can take these things on as true leaders ought to and accept the inspiring challenge of America for the future.”
- Jimmy Carter
“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
“If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.”
- Arthur C. Clarke
“One of the most disturbing aspects of the U.S. environmental policy process is that it rarely recognizes the global nature of the economic and environmental systems in which it operates. In a global system, environmental damage spreads across political boundaries and different resource types. We must never forget that the implications of domestic land use policies extend far beyond the lands to which they are directly applied.”
- Roger Sedjo
“The security of people and nations rests on four pillars - food, energy, water and climate. They are all closely related, and all under increasing stress.”
- Tom Burke
“Now Is the Time to Take a Stand... So The Majestic Trees Stand Forever... To allow the destruction of a primeval forest ecosystem in truth is to damage our national soul... To allow the forces of corruption, arrogance and greed to destroy that which is sacred and beautiful constitutes an abdication of responsibility to one's self, one's nation and to that which is eternal and sacred.”
- The Light Party
“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 college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.”
- P.J. O'Rourke
“The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way.”
- Marshall McLuhan
“Our planet's alarm is going off, and it is time to wake up and take action.”
- Leonardo DiCaprio
“That the AIDS pandemic is threatening sustainable development in Africa only reinforces the reality that health is at the center of sustainable development.”
- Gro H. Brundtland
“There should be more attention paid to scientific research in the ecology area, and I think that such attention to proper environmental concerns would make the public feel much better about it.”
- Thomas R. Cech
“The suddenness of the leap from hardware to software cannot but produce a period of anarchy and collapse, especially in the developed countries.”
- Marshall McLuhan
“The developed nations are the largest polluters in the world today. They must greatly reduce their overconsumption, if we are to reduce pressures on resources and the global environment. The developed nations have the obligation to provide aid and support to developing nations, because only the developed nations have the financial resources and the technical skills for these tasks.
Acting on this recognition is not altruism, but enlightened self-interest: whether industrialized or not, we all have but one lifeboat. No nation can escape from injury when global biological systems are damaged. No nation can escape from conflicts over increasingly scarce resources. In addition, environmental and economic instabilities will cause mass migrations with incalculable consequences for developed and undeveloped nations alike.
Developing nations must realize that environmental damage is one of the gravest threats they face, and that attempts to blunt it will be overwhelmed if their populations go unchecked. The greatest peril is to become trapped in spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse.
Success in this global endeavor will require a great reduction in violence and war. Resources now devoted to the preparation and conduct of war -- amounting to over $1 trillion annually -- will be badly needed in the new tasks and should be diverted to the new challenges.
A new ethic is required -- a new attitude towards discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth. We must recognize the earth's limited capacity to provide for us. We must recognize its fragility. We must no longer allow it to be ravaged. This ethic must motivate a great movement, convince reluctant leaders and reluctant governments and reluctant peoples themselves to effect the needed changes.
The scientists issuing this warning hope that our message will reach and affect people everywhere. We need the help of many.
We require the help of the world community of scientists -- natural, social, economic, political;
We require the help of the world's business and industrial leaders;
We require the help of the worlds religious leaders; and
We require the help of the world's peoples.
We call on all to join us in this task.”
- 'Warning to Humanity', the final remarks signed by 1600 senior scientists from 70 countries including 102 Nobel Prize laureates on November 18, 1992.
“I think all the environmental groups have to focus on at least one main issue together. That's the move we need to do right now.”
- Woody Harrelson
“Whatever we'll be forced to do later, we should be doing now.”
- Dennis Weaver
“There are no environmental solutions to environmental problems, only social, economic and political ones.”
- Charles Secrett
“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”
- E. O. Wilson
“The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.”
- Meister Eckhart
“When we talk about environmental justice, we mean calling a halt to the poisoning and pollution of our poorest communities, from our rural areas to our inner cities. When our children’s lives are no longer cut short by toxic dumps, when their minds are no longer damaged by lead paint poisoning, we will stop wasting energy and intelligence that could build a stronger, more prosperous America.”
- Bill Clinton
“I had such faith in our democratic system; our self-government I actually thought and believed that the story would be compelling enough to cause a real sea-change in the Congress reacted to that issue. I thought they would be startled too. And they weren't.”
- Al Gore
“Of the 55 refineries closed in America in the last 10 years, they were all closed for economic reasons, mostly oil company mergers. Not a single one was closed for environmental purposes or objections.”
- Peter DeFazio
“On ecological grounds, the case for world government is beyond argument.”
- Leo Marx
“The planet will survive. Whether we get to be here and enjoy it, or enjoy life as we've known it, is what's questionable.”
- Ted Danson
“Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.”
- J. G. Ballard
“Environmentalism can't succeed until it confronts the destructive nature of modern work - and supplants it.”
- Curtis White
“If we had a hydrogen economy worldwide, every nation on earth could create its own energy source to support its economy, and the threat of war over diminishing resources would just evaporate.”
- Dennis Weaver
“Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices.”
- Richard David Bach
“The solutions of tomorrow are not stashed behind the walls of bureaucracy or political halls. They are in the minds of engineers, designers, innovators, researchers, environmentalists, geographers and other spirited individuals.”
- Stuart Barea
“Civilization and the life of nations are governed by the same laws as prevail throughout nature and organic life.”
- Ernst Haeckel
“Since the day he came into office, President Bush has worked to gut more than 34 years of hard work by weakening many of our Nation's standing environmental laws, some of which were signed into law by his father.”
- Jim Jeffords
“California is moving the United States beyond debate and doubt to action. What we are doing is changing the dynamic.”
- Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.”
- Eliel Saarinen
“I don't care what the public wants, I'm going to give it what it needs!”
- Christopher Dodd
“1. We must bring environmentally damaging activities under control to restore and protect the integrity of the earth's systems we depend on.
We must, for example, move away from fossil fuels to more benign, inexhaustible energy sources to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the pollution of our air and water. Priority must be given to the development of energy sources matched to third world needs small scale and relatively easy to implement.
We must halt deforestation, injury to and loss of agricultural land, and the loss of terrestrial and marine plant and animal species.
2. We must manage resources crucial to human welfare more effectively.
We must give high priority to efficient use of energy, water, and other materials, including expansion of conservation and recycling.
3. We must stabilize population. This will be possible only if all nations recognize that it requires improved social and economic conditions, and the adoption of effective, voluntary family planning.
4. We must reduce and eventually eliminate poverty.
5. We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions.”
- 'Warning to Humanity', under the heading 'What we must do', the statement signed by 1600 senior scientists from 70 countries including 102 Nobel Prize laureates on November 18, 1992.
“In every case, the environmental hazards were made known only by independent scientists, who were often bitterly opposed by the corporations responsible for the hazards.”
- Barry Commoner
“One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There's always more than you can cope with.”
- Marshall McLuhan
“The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.”
- William Gibson
“The fate of the living planet is the most important issue facing mankind.”
- Gaylord Nelson
“When all the dangerous cliffs are fenced off, all the trees that might fall on people are cut down, all of the insects that bit are positioned...and of the grizzlies are dead because they are occasionally dangerous, the wilderness will not be made safe. Rather, the safety will have destroyed the wilderness.”
- R. Yorke Edwards
“Facts remain facts, even if you choose to ignore them.”
- Dr. P. D. Gollnick
“Although initially the Green Belt Movement's tree planting activities did not address issues of democracy and peace, it soon became clear that responsible governance of the environment was impossible without democratic space. Therefore, the tree became a symbol for the democratic struggle in Kenya.”
- Wangari Maathai
“But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we mush not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.
“I've seen scientists, who were persecuted, ridiculed, deprived of jobs, income, simply because the facts they discovered led them to an inconvenient truth.”
- Al Gore
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
- Edmund Burke
“Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion and adoption.”
- John Stewart Mill
“The good leader is the one the people adore;
the wicked leader is the one the people despise;
the great leader is the one the people say 'we did it ourselves.'”
- Sun Tzu
“Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.”
- E. O. Wilson
“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
- Aldo Leopold
“Good ecology is not an optional extra but a matter of justice.”
- Rowan Williams
“I concluded that while I was going to be able to get a lot of things done with Reagan, I was not going to be able to get the Acid Rain deal with him.”
- Brian Mulroney
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.
“Environmental policy must strike a balance between the earth's best interests and our citizen's pressing needs.”
- Jim Clyburn
“There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.”
- Marshall McLuhan
“It is time to make peace with the planet. We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war.”
- Al Gore
“America has much to gain in terms of jobs and trade by meeting the growing world demand for advanced, environmentally sound technologies.”
- John McCain
“We now have an opportunity, though, to do something we didn't do in the industrial age, and that is to get a leg up on this, to bring the public in quickly, to have an informed debate.”
- Jeremy Rifkin
“The whole ecology around the earth is being destroyed.
But life does not exist as separate islands;
not a single man is an island -- everything is interwoven.
You have heard these two words, dependence and independence.
Both are unreal: the reality is interdependence....
Our problems are international and our solutions are national, but no nation is capable of solving them.
Nations should collapse into one world government.”
- Osho
“Franklin Roosevelt was very concerned about environmental issues.”
- Gaylord Nelson
“Democrats have laid out a program that, if adopted, would make us independent of Middle Eastern oil in ten years, and create a new economy especially for those in rural America. Our program invests in clean energy alternatives and provides energy assistance for those in need.”
- Jim Clyburn
“Making mistakes in generations and centuries past would have consequences we could overcome. We don't have that luxury any more.”
- Al Gore
“It is the American way to reward ability.”
- Judd Gregg
“The first lesson is this: take it from me, every vote counts. In our democracy, every vote has power.”
- Al Gore
“Environmental degradation, overpopulation, refugees, narcotics, terrorism, world crime movements, and organized crime are worldwide problems that don't stop at a nation's borders.”
- Warren Christopher
“Do not feed children on a maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic religion; give them nature. Let their souls drink in all that is pure and sweet. Rear them, if possible, amid pleasant surroundings ... Let nature teach them the lessons of good and proper living, combined with an abundance of well-balanced nourishment. Those children will grow to be the best men and women. Put the best in them by contact with the best outside. They will absorb it as a plant absorbs the sunshine and the dew.”
- Luther Burbank
“Federal elections happen every two years in this country. Presidential elections every four years. And four years just isn't long enough to dismantle all the environmental laws we've got in this country.”
- Jared Diamond
“The human brain now holds the key to our future. We have to recall the image of the planet from outer space: a single entity in which air, water, and continents are interconnected. That is our home.”
- David Suzuki
“Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.”
- Thomas Henry Huxley
“When the people become involved in their government, government becomes more accountable, and our society is stronger, more compassionate, and better prepared for the challenges of the future.”
- Arnold Schwarzenegger
“The AEC scientists were so narrowly focused on arming the United States for nuclear war that they failed to perceive facts - even widely known ones - that were outside their limited field of vision.”
- Barry Commoner
“We have everything we need save perhaps political will. But you know what? In America political will is a renewable resource.”
- Al Gore
“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”
- John F. Kennedy
“But reducing harmful emissions, abating our dependence on foreign oil and developing alternative renewable energy sources have benefits that go beyond environmental health, they improve personal health, enhance national security and encourage our nation's economic viability.”
- Jim Clyburn
“Technology causes problems as well as solves problems. Nobody has figured out a way to ensure that, as of tomorrow, technology won't create problems. Technology simply means increased power, which is why we have the global problems we face today.”
- Jared Diamond