Topsoil Quotes

• There’s nothing under the ground that’s worth more than the little layer of topsoil sitting on top of it.

  Wendell Berry

  Sitting, Littles, Layers

  "The Mad Farmer Lives! A Night With Wendell Berry" by Rhea St. Julien, thirtythreadbaremercies.com. October 30, 2012.

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• Man — despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments — owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.

  Paul Harvey

  Rain, Men, Garden

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• The United States has long thought of itself as the land of infinite plenty, and historically we did have abundant resources. But now we are gradually exhausting our fisheries, our topsoil, our water. On top of that, we're coming to the end of world resources.

  Jared Diamond

  Land, Long, Water

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• We are already engaged in World War III. It is a war against nature, and it is simply no contest. As a result, the threat from the skies is no longer missiles but ozone-layer depletion and global warming. Leaders who assert they will not concede one square meter of national territory to an invader should think of the hundreds of square kilometers of topsoil eroded from their countries each year.

  Norman Myers

  Country, War, Thinking

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• Americans, more than most people, believe that history is the result of individual decisions to implement conscious intentions. For Americans, more than most people, history has been that.... This sense of openness, of possibility and autonomy, has been a national asset as precious as the topsoil of the Middle West. But like topsoil, it is subject to erosion; it requires tending. And it is not bad for Americans to come to terms with the fact that for them too, history is a story of inertia and the unforeseen.

  George Will

  Believe, Erosion, People

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• It's perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth. Jobs and wages depend on science and technology.

  Carl Sagan

  Jobs, Rain, Technology

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.25, Ballantine Books

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• Nations endure only as long as their topsoil.

  Henry Cantwell Wallace

  Long, Endure, Nations

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• However, in my fiction, I want to give an even further warning of where we're heading. And so, in "Heartland," you have people selling off their topsoil, and an underwater oil spill that has lasted over three-hundred days.

  Alexander Weinstein

  Oil, People, Giving

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• When the Europeans first arrived in North America, the average depth of the topsoil was 53.34 cm (1¾ ft) and it was rich in the types of symbiotic organisms necessary for plant roots to absorb minerals from the soil. Today North America averages around 15.24 cm (6 in) of topsoil and most if it is exhausted of nutrients and much is devoid of life.

  Thom Hartmann

  Average, Roots, America

  "Threshold: The Progressive Plan to Pull America Back from the Brink". Book by Thom Hartmann, p.22, July 23, 2009.

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• My guess is that he remembers some of me, some of us together, and the rest rolled off him like topsoil in a flash flood.

  Elizabeth Kostova

  Together, Remember, Flash

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• What geography can give all Middle Westerners, along with the fresh water and topsoil, if they let it, is awe for an Edenic continent stretching forever in all directions. Makes you religious. Takes your breath away.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Religious, Giving, Water

  "Vonnegut at 80" by David Hoppe, www.nuvo.net. January 1, 2003.

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• God must be a smell, one of those delicious dreamy aromas that float into the soul on the warm hopeful days of spring. What is God must be one of those smells that beguile and inebriate the mind, who like a fine drunken horse of water the heart now rides, galloping wild in every direction like a river flooding right through the topsoil of your youth, cutting and eroding a groove that will be your life, a canyon sunk deep into the virgin plains and unsawn forests of your early days.

  Martin Prechtel

  Horse, Spring, Heart

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• Indeed, as we begin the twenty-first century, the money and traditional economies are slowly destroying their own support system. Increasing demands of the two economies are surpassing the sustainable yields of the ecosystems that underpin them. For example, one-third of the world's cropland is losing topsoil at a rate that is undermining its long-term productivity, fully half of the world's rangeland is overgrazed and deteriorating into desert, and the world's forests have shrunk by about half since the dawn of agriculture and are continuing to shrink.

  Stuart L. Hart

  Support Systems, Yield, Land

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• The essential role of the environment is still marginal in discussions about poverty. While we continue to debate these initiatives, environmental degradation, including the loss of biodiversity and topsoil, accelerates, causing development efforts to falter.

  Wangari Maathai

  Loss, Effort, Environmental

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• Moss is inconceivably strong. Moss eats stone; scarcely anything, in return, eats moss. Moss dines upon boulders, slowly but devastatingly, in a meal that lasts for centuries. Given enough time, a colony of moss can turn a cliff into gravel, and turn that gravel into topsoil.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Strong, Moss, Enough Time

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2013). “The Signature of All Things”, p.169, A&C Black

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• Power. What do we mean? 'The ability to determine another man's luck.' ...how is it that some men attain mastery over others while the vast majority live and die as minions, as livestock? The answer is a holy trinity. First: God-given gifts of charisma. Second: the discipline to nurture these gifts to maturity, for though humanity's topsoil is fertile with talent, only one seed in ten thousand will ever flower -- for want of discipline. Third: the will to power.

  David Mitchell

  Flower, Mean, Maturity

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