Environmentalists, Environmentalism Quotes

We need the tonic of wildness.

Our forest policy is not to preserve forests because they are beautiful—though that is a good in itself—not to preserve them because they are refuges for wild creatures of the wilderness—though that is a good in itself—but rather to conserve them in order to guarantee a steady and continuous supply of timber, grass, and above all, water.

This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.

Land is not something you inherit from your parents. It is something you borrow from your children.

Human beings and fish can co-exist peacefully.

Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.

In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.

[A living organism] ... feeds upon negative entropy ... Thus the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness (= fairly low level of entropy) really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment.

The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.

There is no energy in matter other than that received from the environment

We must treat water as if it were the most precious thing in the world, the most valuable natural resource. Be economical with water! Don't waste it! We still have time to do something about this problem before it is too late…. The shortage of fresh water is the major ecological problem of this moment.

Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests, and exterminate fishes, birds, and mammals—not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements.

For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinion.

Leave it [The Grand Canyon] as it is. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it …. Keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you, as one of the sights which every American … should see.

Rome is the most dreadful cesspit … the great sewer of Tarquin itself would have been incapable of dealing with such a mass of filth.

Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy.

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

Natural gas obviously brings with it a number of quality-of-life environmental benefits because it is a relatively clean-burning fuel. It has a CO2 footprint, but it has no particulates. It has none of the other emissions elements that are of concern to public health that other forms of power-generation fuels do have: coal, fuel oil, others.

Vegetarian is the New Prius!

For the most part we don’t have an immediate impact on the species that surrounds us. But we do have an immediate impact on their habitat which determines whether they survive on in some cases shift their ground.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.