Environmental Quotes

• Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.

  Aldo Leopold

  Inspirational, Motivational, Hands

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.556, Library of America

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• Environmental policy must strike a balance between the earth's best interests and our citizen's pressing needs

  Jim Clyburn

  House, Balance, Needs

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• Conservation is a cause that has no end. There is no point at which we will say our work is finished.

  Rachel Carson

  Rivers, Causes, Conservation

  209 Copy quote

• The supreme reality of our time is the vulnerability of our planet.

  John F. Kennedy

  Time, Reality, Wilderness

  Speech to a joint session of the Dail and the Seanad, Dublin, Ireland, June 28, 1963.

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• Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations.

  Earl Nightingale

  Inspirational, Karma, Attitude

  65 Copy quote

• We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children

  Chief Seattle

  Motivational, Wisdom, Peace

  279 Copy quote

• Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.

  Henrik Tikkanen

  Time, Future, Kids

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• We learned that economic growth and environmental protection can and should go hand in hand.

  Christopher Dodd

  Hands, Growth, Protection

  52 Copy quote
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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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• The use of sea and air is common to all; neither can a title to the ocean belong to any people or private persons, forasmuch as neither nature nor public use and custom permit any possession therof.

  Elizabeth I

  Nature, Ocean, Science

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• I think the government has to reposition environment on top of their national and international priorities.

  Brian Mulroney

  Inspirational, Motivational, Thinking

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• Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Apology, Drunk, Society

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• Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.

  George Washington Carver

  Nature, Book, Fall

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• The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Nature, Children, Accountability

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• This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.

  Barack Obama

  Children, Ocean, Future

  Address to the People of Berlin, delivered 24 July 2008, Victory Column

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• We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.

  Thomas Fuller

  Ocean, Sea, Oil And Water

  "Gnomologia". Book by Thomas Fuller, 1732.

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• Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.

  Dr. Seuss

  Inspirational, Life, Fun

  The Lorax (1971)

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• There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all.

  Robert Orben

  Fun, Air, Earth Day

  "Waiting to Inhale: Don't Take a Breath Without the Report From Our Air Pollution Control District". The San Diego Union-Tribune, January 31, 2008.

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• As crude a weapon as a cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life.

  Rachel Carson

  Men, Fabric Of Life, Earth Day

  Silent Spring ch. 17 (1962)

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• The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture.

  Gaylord Nelson

  Issues, Important, Culture

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• You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.

  Chief Seattle

  Mother, Respect, Children

  Seattle (Chief) (1976). “Chief Seattle's Testimony”

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• Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.

  Chief Seattle

  Life, Lonely, Nature

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• If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.

  E. O. Wilson

  Science, Years, World

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• We make the world we live in and shape our own environment.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Motivational, Nature, World

  Orison Swett Marden (1907). “The Optimistic Life”

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• . . . the time has also come to identify and preserve free-flowing stretches of our great rivers before growth and development make the beauty of the unspoiled waterway a memory.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Memories, Rivers, Growth

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1966). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965”, p.160, Best Books on

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