Ecosystems Quotes

• The First Amendment has the same role in my life as a citizen and a writer as the sun has in our ecosystem.

  Michael Chabon

  House, Roles, Citizens

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• Each species on our planet plays a role in the healthy functioning of natural ecosystems, on which humans depend.

  William H. Schlesinger

  Play, Healthy, Roles

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• Let us be good stewards of the Earth we inherited. All of us have to share the Earth's fragile ecosystems and precious resources, and each of us has a role to play in preserving them. If we are to go on living together on this earth, we must all be responsible for it.

  Kofi Annan

  Teamwork, Responsibility, Play

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• We need to start looking at having a way of managing the whole ecosystem, because you can't pick away at it piece by piece, you have to truly start being coordinated and managing our resources as a system. We haven't gotten to that point yet.

  Ted Danson

  Needs, Pieces, Way

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• No phenomenon can be isolated, but has repercussions through every aspect of our lives. We are learning that we are a fundamental part of nature's ecosystems.

  Arthur Erickson

  Artist, Fundamentals, Aspect

  Arthur Erickson's address to the Institute of Canadian Bankers, www.arthurerickson.com. October 16, 1972.

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• Your body isn't just a body. It's an ecosystem.

  Douglas Coupland

  Body, Environment, Your Body

  Douglas Coupland (2011). “The Gum Thief: A Novel”, p.75, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• We are all together in this, we are all together in this single living ecosystem called Planet Earth. As we learn how we fit into the greater scheme of things, and begin to understand how the system works, we can plan ahead, we can use the resources responsibly, to show some respect for this inheritance that goes back 4.6 billion years.

  Sylvia Earle

  Responsibility, Years, Together

  "Ambassador for the World's Oceans". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. January 27, 1991.

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• The great ecosystems are like complex tapestries - a million complicated threads, interwoven, make up the whole picture. Nature can cope with small rents in the fabric; it can even, after a time, cope with major disasters like floods, fires, and earthquakes. What nature cannot cope with is the steady undermining of its fabric by the activities of man.

  Gerald Durrell

  Men, Fire, Earthquakes

  Gerald Durrell (1989). “The Amateur Naturalist”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• We are all together in this, we are all together in this single living ecosystem called planet earth.

  Sylvia Earle

  Together, Earth, Planets

  "Ambassador for the World's Oceans". The Academy of Achievement, www.achievement.org. January 27, 1991.

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• The more complex the network is, the more complex its pattern of interconnections, the more resilient it will be.

  Fritjof Capra

  Resilience, Networking, Patterns

  Fritjof Capra (1996). “The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems”, Doubleday

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• The continued existence of wildlife and wilderness is important to the quality of life of humans. Our challenge for the future is that we realize we are very much a part of the earth's ecosystem, and we must learn to respect and live according to the basic biological laws of nature.

  Jim Fowler

  Law, Challenges, Important

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• The ecosystem of our world is a closed system: it would run out of gas, collapse of its own weight.

  Joan D. Vinge

  Running, Our World, Weight

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• The undisturbed coastal plain is home to a wide variety of plants and animals and is the only wilderness sanctuary in North America that protects a complete range of the arctic ecosystem.

  Dan Lipinski

  Home, Animal, America

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• A diverse ecosystem will also be resilient, because it contains many species with overlapping ecological functions that can partially replace one another. When a particular species is destroyed by a severe disturbance so that a link in the network is broken, a diverse community will be able to survive and reorganize itself... In other words, the more complex the network is, the more complex its pattern of interconnections, the more resilient it will be.

  Fritjof Capra

  Broken, Community, Links

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• As the GAO report recognizes, the long-term health of our forests relies on additional fuel reduction options and funding to reduce the risks that catastrophic fire poses to our nation's ecosystems, communities and federal budgetary resources.

  Greg Walden

  Fire, Long, Community

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• You cannot tackle hunger, disease, and poverty unless you can also provide people with a healthy ecosystem in which their economies can grow.

  Gro Harlem Brundtland

  Health, Hunger And Poverty, People

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• Trying to save ecosystems has more to do with changing egosystems.

  Don Rittner

  Trying

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• The damage that climate change is causing and that will get worse if we fail to act goes beyond the hundreds of thousands of lives, homes and businesses lost, ecosystems destroyed, species driven to extinction, infrastructure smashed and people inconvenienced.

  David Suzuki

  Home, People, Climate

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• I have a lot of plants and fish and a pet lizard and Venus flytraps. I have a whole ecosystem in my room, like a running waterfall and different lights and sensors set on digital timers.

  Chris Pratt

  Running, Light, Pet

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Basically, I think 21st century conservation is moving toward preserving ecosystems by dealing with the needs of people.

  Edward Norton

  Moving, Thinking, People

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• The agriculture we seek will act like an ecosystem, feature material recycling and run on the contemporary sunlight of our star.

  Wes Jackson

  Running, Stars, Agriculture

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• No piecemeal solution is going to prevent the collapse of whole societies and ecosystems ... a radical re-thinking of our values, priorities and political systems is urgent.

  Maude Barlow

  Thinking, Priorities, Political

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• Humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth.

  Gary Larson

  Loss, Water, Diversity

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• To achieve true sustainability, we must reduce our "garbage index" - that which we permanently throw away into the environment that will not be naturally recycled for reuse - to near zero. Productive activities must be organized as closed systems. Minerals and other nonbiodegradable resources, once taken from the ground, must become a part of society's permanent capital stock and be recycled in perpetuity. Organic materials may be disposed into the natural ecosystems, but only in ways that assure that they are absorbed back into the natural production system.

  David Korten

  Zero, Taken, May

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• The destruction of aquatic ecosystem health, and the increasing water scarcity, are in my opinion the most pressing environmental problems facing human kind.

  Maude Barlow

  Water, Environmental, Scarcity

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