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The following are some famous environmental quotes centered on the theme of humanity, culture, and society. If you would like to go to the online environmental forum Click Here.
“Till now man has been up against Nature; from now on he will be up against his own nature.”
- Dennis Gabor
“Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Kill nothing but time.”
- Motto of the Baltimore Grotto
“The environmental movement should also be a human rights movement!”
- Paul Hawken
“Why should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by what is above him when he shows no mercy to what is under him?”
- Pierre Troubetzkoy
“Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life.”
- Elizabeth Goudge
“These days, most nature photographers are deeply committed to the environmental message.”
- Galen Rowell
“What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear.”
- Dag Hammarskjold
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
- John Muir
“The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too.”
- Chief Luther Standing Bear
“Man should organize his existence meaningfully in the natural sphere of his living space, should make everything that nature offers him useful for himself while being conscious of his responsibility, should be the master of nature but at the same time its protector and conserver.”
- Julius Wagner
“How can the spirit of the earth like the white man?... Everywhere the white man has touched it, it is sore.”
- Wintu Woman
“Apparently there is a great discovery or insight which our culture is deliberately designed to supress, distort and ignore. That is that Nature is some kind of minded entity. That Nature is not simply the random flight of atoms through electromagnetic fields. Nature is not the empty, despiritualized lumpen matter that we inherit from modern physics. But it is instead a kind of intelligence, a kind of mind.”
- Terrence McKenna
“The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.”
- Bertrand Russell
“Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.”
- Will Durant
“The diversity of mankind is a basic postulate of our knowledge of human beings. But if mankind is diverse and individuated, then how can anyone propose equality as an ideal? Every year, scholars hold Conferences on Equality and call for greater equality, and no one challenges the basic tenet. But what justification can equality find in the nature of man? If each individual is unique, how else can he be made 'equal' to others than by destroying most of what is human in him and reducing human society to the mindless uniformity of the ant heap?”
- Murray N. Rothbard
“When we see ourselves as greater than others, when we place humankind above other creatures, above and beyond the realms of the birds and the fishes, outside the world of stone and the colors, we give away our power. Only when we see we are part of everything, joined to creation, bound to all the realms and integrated into the web of life, do we begin to call on our full potential.”
- Barry Brailsford
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
- Anais Nin
“To understand all is to forgive all.”
- French Proverb
“Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.”
- Samuel Smiles
“Because I have seen the mountaintop... I may not get to the promised land with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“Culture plays a central role in the political, economic and social life of communities. Indeed, culture may be the missing link in the development of Africa.”
- Wangari Maathai
“The days a man spends fishing or spends hunting should not be deducted from the time that he's on earth. In other words, if I fish today, that should be added to the amount of time I get to live. That's the way I look at recreation. That's why I'll be a big conservation, environmental President, because I plan to fish and hunt as much as I possibly can.”
- George H.W. Bush
“Man is not above nature, but in nature.”
- Ernst Haeckel
“I am a part of all that I have met.”
- Lord Alfred Tennyson
“A faithful friend is the medicine of life.”
- The Apocrypha, 6:16
“The thinking [person] must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another.”
- Albert Schweitzer
“Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.”
- Jesus Christ
“We are living on this planet as if we had another one to go to.”
- Terri Swearingen
“The treatment of the Earth by man the exploiter is not only imprudent, it is sacrilegious. We are unlikely to correct our hideous mistakes in this realm unless we recover the mystical sense of our oneness with nature. Many people think this is fantastic. I think it is fundamental to our Sanity.”
- William Temple
“Wilderness itself is the basis of all our civilization. I wonder if we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness the right to live on?”
- Margaret Murie