Lewis Thomas Quotes

Man's war against nature is a war against himself.

I don't think the planet can survive people. It's not the other way around. I don't think the planet can survive.

If you sort of treat the environment in sort of this mechanical, industrial way that there's a disconnect between man and the environment, it's very easy to treat people that way.

Like all animals, human beings have always taken what they want from nature. But we are the rogue species. We are unique in our ability to use resources on a scale and at a speed that our fellow species can't.

Nature will take precedence over the needs of the modern man.

Way up high in the Shenandoah Mountains where I live, it is difficult to maintain illusions about the natural world. It is dying.

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future.

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

We speak often of 'destroying the planet' when what we mean is destroying its habitability for humans.

The further human society drifts away from nature, the less we understand interdependence.

Ignorance, hatred and greed are killing nature.

Because we're not in harmony with the environment, we're destroying the environment that supports us.

We humans are the greatest of earth's parasites.

It's not that hard to imagine the natural world recovering it's health in our absence: it's more difficult, and more necessary, to imagine it recovering its health in our presence.

I want to interpret the natural world and our links to it. It's driven by the belief of many world-class scientists that we're in the midst of an extinction crisis... This time it's us that's doing it.

Relative to most of the energy and material flows on Earth, the machinations of humankind are puny. The planet's powers are much, much bigger than our own. But in a few sensitive places, we're making an impact on a planetary scale, and that impact is not a good one.

The destruction of the natural beauty, the ecosystems, and the majesty of mountains affect us in ways we're not even aware of. Every time a mountain is beheaded, we chop off a little part of our souls.

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.

For 200 years we've been conquering nature. Now we're beating it to death.

Now, the downside to conservation is that so much is done for the public, which almost always mars the environment that one wanted to conserve.

We're not environmentally doing very good things to this planet, and we might not be around too long.

Civilization... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere.

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.

I was so fanatical about trying to save wildlife... I was unable to accept that we couldn't solve this problem of thousands of years, of wherever humans operated, the environment deteriorated.

People in general romanticize nature, and they make it out to be something that it isn't because humans are so awful. And yes, we are absolutely screwing up this planet, but that is only because we have the capabilities to do so. Animals are not better than us. They are not nicer than us.