Gil Scott-Heron Quotes

Man is a complex animal; he makes deserts bloom and lakes die.

Man is complex—he makes deserts bloom and lakes die.

Disasters are called natural, as if nature were the executioner and not the victim.

If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers.

The conscious purpose of science is control of Nature; its unconscious effect is disruption and chaos.

Our conservation laws are based on static ideas about nature—not landscapes that are rapidly changing because of something humans did.

Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness.

Why is it that the destruction of something created by humans is called vandalism, yet the destruction of something created by God is called development?

These landscapes aren't breaking news or necessarily even illegal. These are intentional, purposeful landscapes, whether to extend our cities or build a mine or put a road in or clear a forest. I've been photographing that which has been intended by us; it's not an accident.

I think that, on the whole, risk-taking entrepreneurial characters regard nature as a sort of background that we can use for our own advantage.

Human nature is to blame for everything, innit? We're just a disease on this planet.

Walking in the mountains helps me unwind, but it also reminds me in a painful way that the real beauty in life is nature and animals, and that the human race, in all its arrogance, is intent on destroying it.

The world breaks a little bit every time we cut down a tree. It's so much easier to cut one down than to grow one. And so it's worth interrogating every time we do it.

I'm not going to argue with scientists how much human activity affects natural environment, including climate.

As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life - a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no "high-minded orientation," no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper.

The planet isn't going anywhere. We are.

Trees are the source of your very breath - cut and you shall curtail life itself.

Americans are nature-lovers: but they only admit of nature proofed and corrected by man.

What happens to other species also happens to us.

The highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.

If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.

in terms of the biology of the planet, development is a euphemism for destruction.

The tragic side of many architectural enterprises is that they destroy natural beauties which are a priceless possession and cannot be replaced.

It is progress when a centuries-old oak is cut down to give space for a road sign.