Deep Ecology Quotes

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  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

  Inspiring, Respect, Nature

  A Sand County Almanac foreword (1949)

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  Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Life, Beauty

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.15, St. Martin's Press

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• 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

  Beauty, Nature, Integrity

  A Sand County Almanac pt. 3 (1949)

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• The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

  Rachel Carson

  Nature, Zoos, Ocean

  Rachel Carson (2002). “Silent Spring”, p.19, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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  A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling 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

  Inspirational, Beauty, Spiritual

  Letter of 1950, as quoted in "The New York Times", March 29, 1972.

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• We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.

  Aldo Leopold

  Respect, Nature, Community Living

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.8, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Shallow ecology is anthropocentric, or human-centred. It views humans as above or outside nature, as the source of all value, and ascribes only instrumental, or 'use', value to nature. Deep ecology does not separate humans - or anything else - from the natural environment. It does see the world not as a collection of isolated objects but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all human beings and views humans as just one particular strand in the web of life.

  Fritjof Capra

  Views, Web Of Life, Doe

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• The basic pattern of life is a network. Whenever you see life, you see networks. The whole planet, what we can term 'Gaia' is a network of processes involving feedback tubes. Humans are part of the larger whole, Gaia.

  Fritjof Capra

  Patterns, Life Is, Feedback

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• We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of 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.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Nature

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.15, St. Martin's Press

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• In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

  George Orwell

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Wisdom

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• Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Reality, Source, Found

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• I think human self-hatred may be the great untold story of the millennium. It's the common thread linking deep ecology and animal rights, the love and money we lavish on pets, the uneasy longing for extraterrestrials to be meddling with us.

  Annie Gottlieb

  Thinking, Animal, Rights

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• Our brains are separate and independent enough from our genes to rebel against them.. we do so in a small way everytime we use contraception. There is no reason why we should not rebel in a large way too.

  Richard Dawkins

  Independent, Brain, Reason Why

  Richard Dawkins (2006). “The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary edition”, p.332, OUP Oxford

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  Hell is Truth Seen Too Late.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Truth, Philosophy, Too Late

  Quoted by Johnson, Enemies of Society (1977). Johnson's corollary is "Survival is falsehood detected in time."

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• We don't know nearly enough about the complexities of Nature. If we think we can eliminate natural ecosystems and substitute prosthetic devices, i.e. clean air or water with fusion energy - we are kidding ourselves.

  E. O. Wilson

  Thinking, Air, Ecosystems

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• .. the word ecology, coined by the German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel (initially as oecology) in 1866. derives from the Greek oikos, "referring originally to the family household and its daily operations and maintenance." The term ecology is therefore intended to refer to the study of the conditions of existence that pertain to, and the interactions between, all the entities that make up our larger, cosmic household here upon earth.

  Warwick Fox

  Greek, Maintenance, Earth

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• History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves

  Jared Diamond

  Differences, History, Different

  Jared Diamond (2017). “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, p.19, W. W. Norton & Company

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• We are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. We can never have enough of nature.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Reality, Sublime, Atheism

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• If religion is the establishing of a relationship between man and the universe, then morality is the explanation of those activities that automatically result when a person maintains a relationship to the universe.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Men, Morality, Results

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• When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Space, Matter

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• Metaphysics of Evolution: What is Matter & Life? 'Recent discoveries from Russia confirm that DNA / Genes are resonant structures which are subtly interconnected to their environment. i.e. Genetic material can be manipulated by waves with certain resonant frequencies.'

  Alan Haselhurst

  Russia, Dna, Discovery

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• Mans most disagreeable habits and idiosyncrasies, his deceit, his cowardice, his lack of reverence, are engendered by his incomplete adjustment to a complicated civilisation. It is the result of the conflict between our instincts and our culture.

  Sigmund Freud

  Deceit, Culture, Conflict

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• Metaphysics is universal and is exclusively concerned with primary substance. ... And here we will have the science to study that which is, both in its essence and in the properties which it has.

  Aristotle

  Essence, Substance, Study

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• Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine... I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality.

  Charles Darwin

  Mean, Views, Looks

  "On the Origin of the Species and The Voyage of the Beagle".

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