Ecological Balance Quotes

• The white race is the cancer of human history.

  Susan Sontag

  Cancer, Race, White

  "What's Happening in America" (1966)

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. The ecological balance cannot be re-established unless we recognize again that only persons have ends and only persons can work towards them.

  Ivan Illich

  Balance, Progressive, Ends

  27 Copy quote

• Canada regards herself as responsible to all mankind for the peculiar ecological balance that now exists so precariously in the water, ice and land areas of the Arctic archipelago. We do not doubt for a moment that the rest of the world would find us at fault, and hold us liable, should we fail to ensure adequate protection of that environment from pollution or artificial deterioration.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Ice, Land, Water

  Pierre Trudeau during House of Commons Debate, October 24, 1969.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone — its ideologies and inventions — which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.

  Susan Sontag

  Cancer, Civilization, White

  'Partisan Review' Winter 1967, p. 57

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• A society that could heal the dismembered world would recognize the inherent value of each person and of the plant, animal and elemental life that makes up the earth's living body; it would offer real protection, encourage free expression, and reestablish an ecological balance to be biologically and economically sustainable. Its underlying metaphor would be mystery, the sense of wonder at all that is beyond us and around us, at the forces that sustain our lives and the intricate complexity and beauty of their dance.

  Starhawk

  Real, Animal, Expression

  63 Copy quote

• Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow. It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Assessment, Agreement, People

  Message Of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI For The Celebration Of The World Day Of Peace, w2.vatican.va. January 1, 2008.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nuclear man is the man who realizes that his creative powers hold the potential for self-destruction. He sees that in this nuclear age vast new industrial complexes enable man to produce in one hour that which he labored over for years in the past, but he also realizes that these same industries have disturbed the ecological balance and, through air and noise pollution, have contaminated his own milieu.

  Henri Nouwen

  Past, Men, Air

  4 Copy quote