E. F. Schumacher Quotes

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.

Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.

I'm doing it with a rock format and the words are about people living in harmony with Mother Earth. It's very important to me - and I feel it should be for every living human on this planet.

Nature knows best.

Unless action is taken soon - unless we can display the same vision of that earlier period - we will lose the treasure of California's open space and environmental beauty.

Every time we try to do something to improve the environment someone predicts that it will ruin the economy.

The environment is more than just nature. The environment is peoples needs.

Every time there is an economic intensification, there is an ecological impact.

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.

… human population growth within the ecosystem was closely analogous to the growth of malignant tumor cells within an organism: that man was acting like a cancer on the biosphere. The multiplication of human numbers certainly seems wild and uncontrolled... Four million a month - the equivalent of the population of Chicago... We seem to be doing all right at the moment; but if you could ask cancer cells, I suspect they would think they were doing fine. But when the organism dies, so do they; and for our own, selfish, practical, utilitarian reasons, I think we should be careful about how we influence the rest of the ecosystem.

… work [jobs] and the environment should not be played off against each other.

They go together, a strong environment and a strong economy. In Florida the environment is the economy.

The natural world is a source of inspiration.

We can save ourselves, but only if we let go of the myth of dominance and mastery and learn to work with nature.

I don’t know how to save the world. I don’t have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth’s inhabitants, none of us will survive—nor will we deserve to.

My worry is that the world is becoming more chaotic every day. My excitement is that more people paying attention to 'Less but better' could help solve our growing problems.

There must be limits, somewhere, to the human footprint on this earth. When the whole of the world is reduced to nothing but human product, we will have lost the map that can show us how we got here, and can offer our spirits an answer when we ask why. Surely we are capable of declaring sacred some quarters that we dare not enter or possess.

We should be evolving into a new age of business with a worldview that maintains one simple proposition - that all of nature: humans, animals, earth, are interconnected and interdependent.

The natural environment sustains the life of all beings universally.

Consider the rose...The rose is the sweetest smelling flower of all, and it's the most beautiful because it's the most simple, right? But sometimes, you got to clip the rose. You got to cut the rose back, so something sweeter smelling and stronger, and even more beautiful, will grow in its place

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity.

The process is the most beautiful part.

Some may wonder why I chose wildflowers when there are hunger and unemployment and the big bomb in the world. Well, I, for one, think we will survive, and I hope that along the way we can keep alive our experience with the flowering earth. For the bounty of nature is also one of the deep needs of man.

Watch nature, because it is your greatest teacher. It moves and flows and moves on again. There is an incredible beauty out there in the mountains, in the forests, to teach you it's silence, it's beauty, it's humility. Stay aligned to that.