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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
“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
“We must recognise that the suffering of one person or one nation is the suffering of humanity. That the happiness of one person or nation is the happiness of humanity.”
- Dalai Lama: Tenzin Gyatso
“We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future.”
- John F. Kennedy
“The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot.”
- Mark Twain
“Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.”
- Corrie Ten Boom
“Driven by the force of love, the fragments of the world seek each other that the world may come into being.”
- Teilhard de Chardin
“Almost always the creative, dedicated minority has made the world better.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Follow the three R’s: Respect for self, respect for others, responsibility for all your actions.”
- Dalai Lama: Tenzin Gyatso
“There is no better high than discovery.”
- E. O. Wilson
“When we look at modern man we have to face the fact that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance. We've learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven't learned to walk the earth as brothers and sisters.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
“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
“It’s not just global warming, it’s not just a loss of biodiversity, it’s not just the pollution of our oceans and the clearing of our rainforests and all these complicated systems, The 11th Hour movie talks about the world economy, it talks about politics, it talks about personal transformation and environmental consciousness that we need to have in this generation to implement a lot of these changes that need to occur.”
- Leonardo DiCaprio
“In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.”
- Dalai Lama: Tenzin Gyatso
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
“We are the most dangerous species of life on the planet, and every other species, even the earth itself, has cause to fear our power to exterminate. But we are also the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.”
- Wallace Stegner
“The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it.”
- Jacques Yves Cousteau
“People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive.”
- E. O. Wilson
“If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are looking the wrong way.”
- Barry Commoner
“Society is as needful to us as air or food.”
- William Ellery Channing
“To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance.”
- Buddha
“There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.”
- Will Durant
“If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.”
- E. O. Wilson
“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”
- Winston Churchill
“The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.”
- Barry Commoner
“We have a moral responsibility to protect the earth and ensure that our children and grandchildren have a healthy and sustainable environment in which to live.”
- Jim Clyburn
“The more closely we identify ourselves with the rest of life, the more quickly we will be able to discover the sources of human sensibility and acquire the knowledge on which an enduring ethic, a sense of preferred direction, can be built.”
- E. O. Wilson
“We shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.”
- Lynn White, Jr
“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 whole of science, and one is tempted to think the whole of the life of any thinking man, is trying to come to terms with the relationship between yourself and the natural world. Why are you here, and how do you fit in, and what's it all about.”
- David Attenborough
“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
“Unforgiveness wastes energy as extra weight is carried around. Unforgiveness requires the energy waste of repressing.”
- Nancy Taylor
“The word "wilderness" occurs approximately three hundred times in the Bible, and all its meanings are derogatory.”
- René Dubos
“We generate our own environment. We get exactly what we deserve. How can we resent a life we've created ourselves? Who's to blame, who's to credit but us? Who can change it, anytime we wish, but us?”
- Richard Bach
“American culture is torn between our long romance with violence and our terror of the devastation wrought by war and crime and environmental havoc.”
- Katherine Dunn
“Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.”
- Garrett Hardin
“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
- Walt Kelly
“Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.”
- Jimmy Carter
“After all, despite the economic advantage to firms that employed child labor, it was in the social interest, as a national policy, to abolish it - removing that advantage for all firms.”
- Barry Commoner
“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
- Edmund Burke
“The condition of being forgiven is self-abandonment. The proud man prefers self-reproach, however painful, because the reproached self isn't abandoned; it remains intact.”
- Aldous Huxley
“I do not think the measure of a civilization is how tall its buildings of concrete are, But rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man.”
- Sun Bear of the Chippewa Tribe
“It's a job that's never started that takes the longest to finish.”
- J.R.R. Tolkien
“The dual scourge of hunger and malnutrition will be truly vanquished not only when granaries are full, but also when people's basic health needs are met and women are given their rightful role in societies.”
- Gro H. Brundtland
“Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.”
- Barry Commoner
“We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.”
- Jimmy Carter
“A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy.”
- John Sawhill
“The more evil done to you the more good do in return.”
- Buddha
“If you wish your children to think deep thoughts, to know the holiest emotions, take them to the woods and hills, and give them the freedom of the meadows; the hills purify those who walk upon them.”
- Richard Jefferies
“Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”
- Thomas Edison
“I'm heartened by the growing awareness of global warming among important communities and organizations in our nation.”
- Jim Clyburn
“If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.”
- E. O. Wilson
“Compassion is a reflection of our heart. Conviction is a reflection of our soul. A clean environment is the reflection of our intellect.”
- Jim Slinsky
“The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men’s apples and head their cabbages.”
- Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac
“True wisdom consists in not departing from nature and in moulding our conduct according to her laws and model.”
- Seneca
“No sooner does man discover intelligence than he tries to involve it in his own stupidity.”
- Jacques Yves Cousteau
“I am not here as a public official, but as a citizen of a troubled world who finds hope in a growing consensus that the generally accepted goals of society are peace, freedom, human rights, environmental quality, the alleviation of suffering, and the rule of law.”
- Jimmy Carter
“Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”
- Malcolm Forbes
“The rich diversity of the world's cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.”
- Aldo Leopold
“Man must not fall into the error of thinking that he was ever meant to become lord and master of Nature. A lopsided education has helped to encourage that illusion. Man must realize that a fundamental law of necessity reigns throughout the whole realm of Nature and that his existence is subject to the law of eternal struggle and strife. He will then feel that there cannot be a separate law for mankind in a world in which planets and suns follow their orbits, where moons and planets trace their destined paths, where the strong are always the masters of the weak and where those subject to such laws must obey them or be destroyed. Man must also submit to the eternal principles of this supreme wisdom. He may try to understand them but he can never free himself from their sway.”
- Adolf Hitler
“There are forces in nature called Love and Hate. The force of Love causes elements to be attracted to each other and to be built up into some particular form or person, and the force of Hate causes the decomposition of things.”
- Empedocles
“If we live truly, we shall see truly.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We, who have so much, must do more to help those in need. And most of all, we must live simply, so that others may simply live.”
- Ed Begley, Jr.
“A shared vision is not an idea. It is not even an important idea such as freedom. It is, rather, a force in people's hearts, a force of impressive power. It may be inspired by an idea, but once it goes further -- if it is compelling enough to acquire the support of more than one person -- then it is no longer an abstraction. It is palpable. People begin to see it as if it exists. Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision.”
- Peter Senge
“When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.”
- Jacques Yves Cousteau
“Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day.”
- Stephen Jay Gould
“My entry into the environmental arena was through the issue that so dramatically - and destructively - demonstrates the link between science and social action: nuclear weapons.”
- Barry Commoner
“We must develop a better sense of responsibilty towards our total environment.”
- Jon Wynne-Tyson
“We sometimes emphasize the danger in a crisis without focusing on the opportunities that are there. We should feel a great sense of urgency because it is the most dangerous crisis we have ever faced, by far. But it also provides us with opportunities to do a lot of things we ought to be doing for other reasons anyway. And to solve this crisis we can develop a shared sense of moral purpose.”
- Al Gore
“Until writing was invented, man lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion.”
- Marshall McLuhan
“If you want one year of prosperity, plant corn.
If you want ten years of prosperity, plant trees.
If you want one hundred years of prosperity, educate people.”
- Chinese Proverb
“Humans are social beings, so it is little surprise that good relationships are one of the most important ingredients for a high quality of life.”
- Robert Putnam
“We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“Such is the audacity of man, that he hath learned to counterfeit Nature, yea, and is so bold as to challenge her in her work.”
- Pliny the Elder
“You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself.”
- Nelson Mandela
“If there is to be an ecologically sound society, it will have to come from the grass roots up, not from the top down.”
- Paul Hawken
“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
“For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity.”
- William Wordsworth
“We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves to exist in this new environment.”
- Norbert Wiener
“The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology.”
- E. O. Wilson
“An eye for an eye makes everyone blind.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
“The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.”
- Allen Ginsberg
“Ultimately, deep ecological awareness is spiritual or religious awareness. When the concept of the human spirit is understood as the mode of consciousness in which the individual feels a sense of belonging, of connectedness, to the cosmos as a whole, it become clear that ecological awareness is spiritual in its deepest essence.”
- Fritjof Capra
“The planet is about to break out with fever, indeed it may already have, and we human beings are the disease. We should be at war with ourselves and our lifestyles.”
- Thomas Lovejoy
“We are social creatures, our behaviours are shaped and constrained by social norms and expectations. Negotiating change is best pursued at the level of groups and communities. Social support is particularly vital in breaking habits, and in devising new social norms and more sustainable patterns of consumption. Government can play a vital role in nurturing and supporting community based social change.”
- Tim Jackson
“You see, it's never the environment; it's never the events of our lives, but the meaning we attach to the events - how we interpret them - that shapes who we are today and who we'll become tomorrow.”
- Anthony Robbins
“It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brain and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“Earth Day 1970 was irrefutable evidence that the American people understood the environmental threat and wanted action to resolve it.”
- Barry Commoner
“Man must feel the earth to know himself and recognize his values.... God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.”
- Charles A. Lindbergh
“I believe as human beings we are out of balance, out of synch with the earth.”
- Kevin Richardson
“The difference between animals and humans is that animals change themselves for the environment, but humans change the environment for themselves.”
- Ayn Rand
“People protect what they love.”
- Jacques Yves Cousteau
“The family is the nucleus of civilization.”
- Will Durant
“Now I truly believe that we in this generation must come to terms with nature, and I think we're challenged, as mankind has never been challenged before, to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature but of ourselves.”
- Rachel Carson
“There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.”
- Will Durant
“That's human nature. Nobody does anything until it's too late.”
- Michael Crichton
"In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught."
- Baba Dioum
“I do believe that it is extremely important that each one of us is a participant in life and what's going on around us rather than being a spectator to it and if you do that, if you participate in the world, in your community, your school, your company, or your country, whatever.. they you will be useful and hopefully leave the planet a little better.”
- Janet Holmes a Court
“When the earth is sick and polluted, human health is impossible.... To heal ourselves we must heal our planet, and to heal our planet we must heal ourselves.”
- Bobby McLeod
“Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyles.”
- Pope John Paul II
“We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.”
- Margaret Mead