Pete Seeger Quotes

There's been progress toward seeing that nature and culture are not opposing terms, and that wilderness is not the only kind of landscape for environmentalists to concern themselves with.

Seriously I suspected I was a good actor, though I didn't know it during 'Monsoon Wedding.' Now I realize the more I learn, the less I know about acting... and life.

I think that our cooperative conservation approaches get people to sit down and grapple with problem solving.

Whether it's in the right way or sometimes the wrong way, you learn about life and its lessons.

The one thing that I keep learning over and over again is that I don't know nothing. I mean, that's my life lesson.

The whole basis of conserving is not about nature - it is about people. If we don't look after the people surrounding the place, and if they don't have the value of preserving it in their pockets, then they are not going to preserve it.

I realised years ago that no one really knows what they're doing and you kind of just learn by observing.

It really is very true that the more you do, the less you know. I try to keep myself very open-minded in that sense.

The recent upsurge of public concern over environmental questions reflects a belated recognition that man has been too cavalier in his relations with nature. Unless we arrest the depredations that have been inflicted so carelessly on our natural systems-which exist in an intricate set of balances-we face the prospect of ecological disaster.

In every bio-region, one of the most urgent tasks is to rebuild the community of naturalists - so radically depleted in recent years, as young people have spent less time in nature, and higher education has placed less value on such disciplines as zoology……The times are right for the return of the amateur, twenty-first-century, citizen naturalist. To be a citizen naturalist is to take personal action, to both protect and participate in nature.

There is much the government can do and should do to improve the environment. But even more important is the individual who plants a tree or cleans a corner of neglect. For it is the individual who himself benefits, and also protects a heritage of beauty for his children and future generations.

We only have this one planet; we got to figure out how to live on it without destroying it.

One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living.

Reclaim our environment from those who would destroy it with their predatory economic behavior.

If somebody wants to learn their why, either you help them or send them over to their course. All of this stuff helps.

If you're imaginatively responsible to the place you live in, you understand the watershed.

To sustain an environment suitable for man, we must fight on a thousand battlegrounds. Despite all of our wealth and knowledge, we cannot create a redwood forest, a wild river, or a gleaming seashore.

Only caring individuals can restore the places we inhabit. The 'simple act of planting a tree' not only restores the places we live, but makes us whole and powerful again.

I'll never know - I'll never profess to know - anything anywhere near it all. It'sall a journey - life, work, and relationships. Mistakes and learning, and learning not to make your mistakes again.

I only started to understand the concept of "environmental protection" 14 years ago. I was an ambassador for a charity event, and the staff told me that the consumption of disposable chopsticks in China, per year, could result in the devastation of unimaginable acres of forest.

I will have to rely on that painful teacher, experience.

You can make a lot of speeches, but the real thing is when you dig a hole, plant a tree, give it water, and make it survive. That's what makes the difference

If you really want to help this world, what you will have to teach is how to live in it.

In the end, the most important thing is not to do things for people who are poor and in distress, but to enter into relationship with them, to be with them and help them find confidence in themselves and discover their own gifts.

...I was a young man. I hardly knew what I knew, let alone what I was going to know.