Eco Quotes

• A functioning eco-system is a human need.

  Noam Chomsky

  Needs, Humans, Human Needs

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• The problem is no longer that with every pair of hands that comes into the world there comes a hungry stomach. Rather it is that, attached to those hands are sharp elbows.

  Paul Samuelson

  Hands, Survival, Elbows

  Paul Anthony Samuelson (1973). “The Samuelson sampler”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no unemployment in eco-systems

  Gunter Pauli

  Unemployment

  8 Copy quote

• The magnificence of mountains, the serenity of nature-nothing is safe from the idiot marks of man's passing.

  Bill Vaughan

  Fun, Men, Serenity

  4 Copy quote

• Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imagining ourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature. We're not the brain, we are a cancer on nature.

  David Foreman

  Cancer, Brain, Environmental

  25 Copy quote

• Incidentally, I am intrigued by how many European and Latin American writers expressed their political views in the columns they routinely wrote or write in the popular press, like Saramago, Vargas Llosa, and Eco. This strikes me as one way of avoiding opinionated fiction, and allowing your imagination a broader latitude. Similarly, fiction writers from places like India and Pakistan are commonly expected to provide primers to their country's histories and present-day conflicts. But we haven't had that tradition in Anglo-America.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Country, Latin, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• Free shackled rivers!...The finest fantasy of eco-warriors in the West is the destruction of [Glen Canyon] Dam and the liberation of the Colorado [River].

  David Foreman

  Warrior, Rivers, Colorado River

  0 Copy quote

• A reasonable agriculture would do its best to emulate nature. Rather than change the earth to suit a crop... it would diversify its crops to suit the earth

  Verlyn Klinkenborg

  Inspirational, Motivational, Agriculture

  Verlyn Klinkenborg (2013). “More Scenes from the Rural Life”, p.109, Princeton Architectural Press

  2 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let's build Paradise again.

  Sebastiao Salgado

  Inspirational, Motivational, Paradise

  16 Copy quote

• To take care of the environment, we must first take care of the environmentalist.

  Nhat Hanh

  Inspirational, Motivational, Care

  0 Copy quote

• 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

  Morning, Long, Ignorant

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.305, W. W. Norton & Company

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• My daughter's just going to be really hip! My goal is to be as eco-conscious as possible: There's so much out there for parents who want to do that. I plan to keep her eco-friendly as she gets older. I think we all sort of have to do it.

  Ana Ortiz

  Daughter, Mother, Thinking

  0 Copy quote

• We are into the opening stages of a human-caused biotic holocaust-a wholesale elimination of species-that could leave the planet impoverished for at least five million years.

  Norman Myers

  Inspirational, Motivational, Years

  3 Copy quote

• Away, away, from men and towns,
  To the wild wood and the downs, -
  To the silent wilderness,
  Where the soul need not repress
  Its music.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Men, Rivers, Soul

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1872). “A Selection from the Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley Edited with a Memoir by Mathilde Blind”, p.84

  79 Copy quote

  Show source

• At home the great delight is to see the clover and grass now growing on places that were bare when we came. These small healings of the ground are my model accomplishment-everything else I do must aspire to that. While I was at that work the world gained with every move I made, and I harmed nothing.

  Wendell Berry

  Moving, Healing, Home

  Wendell Berry (2012). “A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural”, p.43, Counterpoint Press

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• Will urban sprawl spread so far that most people lose all touch with nature? Will the day come when the only bird a typical American child ever sees is a canary in a pet shop window? When the only wild animal he knows is a rat-glimpsed on a night drive through some city slum? When the only tree he touches is the cleverly fabricated plastic evergreen that shades his gifts on Christmas morning?

  Frank N. Ikard

  Morning, Children, Animal

  64 Copy quote

• Others [terrorists] are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves

  William Cohen

  Eugenics, Volcanoes, Earthquakes

  60 Copy quote

• We have wished, we eco-freaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion-guilt-free at last!

  Stewart Brand

  Technology, Garden, Age

  2 Copy quote

• A family-friendly "eco-populism" can mobilize and unite millions who, at this point, would be turned off by a more extreme set of demands. The momentum will build, through these early efforts, for more comprehensive solutions.

  Van Jones

  Effort, Friendly, Would Be

  0 Copy quote

• Success is the ability to meet worthy goals, but it's also the ability to love and have compassion and the ability to get in touch with your creative center, to transform yourself toward more peaceful and just pursuits. I hope we redefine success. Otherwise, we'll see more of what we're already seeing - more aggression, more burnout, more Wall Street scandals, more war, more terrorism, more eco-destruction.

  Deepak Chopra

  Wall, War, Compassion

  "How A Video Game Could Make You A Better Man". Interview with John Scott Lewinski, www.askmen.com. November 22, 2011.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• In nature the only source of energy is from the sun. So in ecological systems everything comes from the sun through the process of photosynthesis whereas now in human built environment our source of energy is from fossil fuels, renewable, wood energy or hydro-energy but it is not from the sun. So until we are able to operate and run a human built environment by imitating photosynthesis it will be a long while before we can have a true eco-system.

  Ken Yeang

  Running, Long, Fuel

  Source: www.cnn.com

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• In silence, we are better able to listen to and understand ourselves; ideas come to birth and acquire depth... Deeper reflection helps us to discover the links between events that at first sight seem unconnected... For this to happen, it is necessary to develop an appropriate environment, a kind of 'eco-system' that maintains a just equilibrium between silence, words, images and sounds.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Faith, Inspiration, Reflection

  3 Copy quote

• Any successful long-term strategy will require that the green wave fully and passionately embrace the principles of eco-equity.

  Van Jones

  Successful, Long, Principles

  10 Copy quote

• The law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it.

  Isaac Asimov

  Believe, Science, Law

  "Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations". 1988.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our concept of eco-effectiveness means working on the right things - on the right products and services and systems - instead of making the wrong things less bad. Once you are doing the right things, then doing them "right," with the help of efficiency among other tools, makes perfect sense.

  William McDonough

  Business, Mean, Effectiveness

  William McDonough, Michael Braungart (2010). “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things”, p.76, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

  Show source