“If you have forest, if you have green forest, the water table goes up. What happens with deforestation is the water level goes down and we all know how much importance drinking water has” …. (Mahendra Singh Dhoni 1981 – )
“What you buy doesn’t make you cool, it makes you the opposite. Stop buying stuff just to have more stuff. Most of us have enough of everything already. Let’s care for what we’ve got, instead, and dispose of our disposable society” …. (Rob Stewart 1979 – 2017)
“Our planet’s alarm is going off, and it is time to wake up and take action!” …. (Leonardo DiCaprio 1974 -)
“The more we pollute the earth, the less we deserve to live on earth!” …. (Mehmet Murat Ildan 1965 – )
“Opening up Atlantic and Arctic waters to drilling would lock the next generation into burning oil and gas in a way that only makes climate change that much worse, fuelling ever rising seas, widening deserts, withering drought, blistering heat, raging storms, wildfires, floods and other hallmarks of climate chaos” …. (Frances Beinecke 1960 – )
“When we marvel at that blue marble in all its delicacy and frailty, and resolve to save the planet, we cast ourselves in a very specific role. That role is of a parent, the parent of the earth. But the opposite is the case. It is we humans who are fragile and vulnerable and the earth that is hearty and powerful, and holds us in its hands. In pragmatic terms, our challenge is less to save the earth from ourselves and more to save ourselves from an earth that, if pushed too far, has ample power to rock, burn, and shake us off completely. That knowledge should inform all we do” …. (Naomi Klein 1970 – )
“We have to get to the point where each individual, each corporation, each community chooses low carbon, because it makes fundamental sense. It should become a no-brainer” …. (Christiana Figueres 1956 – )
“One of the big questions in the climate change debate: Are humans any smarter than frogs in a pot? If you put a frog in a pot and slowly turn up the heat, it won’t jump out. Instead, it will enjoy the nice warm bath until it is cooked to death. We humans seem to be doing pretty much the same thing” …. (Jeff Goodell 1959 – )
“Catastrophic climate change is the natural consequence of global systemic violence. That means, it is intimately connected with racism, sexism, classism, militarism, war, nuclear weapons, and every form of violence. If we want to deepen our nonviolence and our conscious oneness with the earth, we have to connect the various facets of systemic violence with environmental destruction so we know what we are up against, what we are resisting, and how broad out creative nonviolence needs to go” …. (John Dear 1959 – )
“The average lawn is an interesting beast: people plant it, then douse it with artificial fertilizers and dangerous pesticides to make it grow and to keep it uniform-all so that they can hack and mow what they encouraged to grow. And woe to the small yellow flower that rears its head!” …. (Michael Braungart 1958 – )
“I’m always amazed at the human capacity to not make fundamental changes, but instead merely adapt. I see these pictures of people in Beijing and New Delhi, walking around with masks on, because you can’t walk outside your house and breathe? If you can’t breathe?…If that’s not the cue to make a fundamental change, I don’t know what is!” …. (Bill Maher 1956 – )
“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands” …. (Terry Tempest Williams 1955 – )
“We’re bound with the rest of life in a network, a network including not just all living things but the energy and nonliving matter that flows through the living, making and keeping all of us alive as we make it alive. We can keep debating ideologies and sending entreaties toward heaven. But unless we embrace the fuller reality we’re in- and reality’s implications- we’ll face big problems.” …. (Carl Safina 1955 – )
“Well, I think of the folks who are the climate deniers as the flat Earthers and the people who say the moon landings never happened” …. (Jeffrey Kluger 1954 – )
“As people flock to urban centres where ground space is limited, cities with green walls and roofs, and skyscraper farms offer improved health and well-being, renewable resources, reliable food supply, and relief to the environment” …. (Diane Ackerman 1948 -)
“This book was written using 100% recycled words.” …. (Terry Pratchett 1948 – 2015)
“As human beings, we are vulnerable to confusing the unprecedented with the improbable. In our everyday experience, if something has never happened before, we are generally safe in assuming it is not going to happen in the future, but the exceptions can kill you and climate change is one of those exceptions” …. (Al Gore 1948 – )
“At first I thought I was fighting to save the rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I was fighting for humanity” …. Chico Mendez 1947 – 1988)
“We should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide.” …. Michio Kaku 1947 – )
“There is no ethical basis for elevating membership of one particular species into a morally crucial characteristic. From an ethical point of view, we all stand on an equal footing – whether we stand on two feet, one foot or none at all …” …. (Peter Singer 1946 – )
“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men” …. Alice Walker 1944 – )
“Climate change does not respect border; it does not respect who you are – rich and poor, small and big. Therefore, this is what we call ‘global challenges,’ which require global solidarity” …. (Ban Ki-moon 1944 – )
“The recognition that human beings are specifically and deliberately responsible for whatever aberrances farm animals may embody, that their discordances reflect our, not their, primary disruption of natural rhythms, and that we owe them more rather than less for having stripped them of their birthright and earthrights has not entered into the environmentalist discussions that I’ve encountered to date” …. Karen Davis 1944 – )
“The future will either be green or not at all” …. (Bob Brown 1944 – )
“If human beings were to treat one another’s personal property the way they treat the natural environment, we would view that behaviour as anti-social and illegal” …. (Bartholomew 1 of Constantinople 1940 – )
“The generation that destroys the environment is not the generation that pays the price. That is the problem.” …. Wangari Maathai 1940 – 2011)
“Everything we personally own that’s made, sold, shipped, stored, cleaned, and ultimately thrown away does some environmental harm every step of the way, harm that we’re either directly responsible for or is done on our behalf.” …. (Yvon Chouinard 1938 – )
“Doing all we can to combat climate change comes with numerous benefits, from reducing pollution and associated health care costs to strengthening and diversifying the economy by shifting to renewable energy, among other measures” …. (David Suzuki 1936 – )
“I believe it is critically important for all Westerners to realize that the idea of the earth not being alive is a new idea. Even today, that view is far from universal and may represent a minority viewpoint, advocated mainly by people who live in Western technological cultures. Failing to see the planet as alive, they have become free of moral and ethical constraints, and have benefited from exploiting resources at the earth’s expense. But if the majority of people in the United States, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union are comfortable regarding the earth as a huge, dead rock, this is emphatically not true of those Indians and aboriginal peoples throughout the world who continue to live as they have for thousands of years, in direct relationship to the planet” …. (Jerry Mander 1936 – )
“Even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take, every drop of water you drink, every bite you consume. Everyone, everywhere is inextricably connected to and utterly dependent upon the existence of the sea” …. (Sylvia Earl 1935 – )
“It’s been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development. If you green an area, the rate of crime goes down. Torture victims begin to recover when they spend time outside in a garden with flowers. So we need them, in some deep psychological sense, which I don’t suppose anybody really understands yet” …. (Jane Goodall 1934 -)
“Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water. Don’t sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet.” …. (Carl Sagan 1934 – 1996)
“Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the ‘environmentalist’ view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view” …. (Edward O. Wilson 1929 – )
“Trees are soul people to me, maybe not to other people, but I have watched the trees when they pray, and I have watched them shout and sometimes they give thanks slowly and quietly” …. (Bessie Harvey 1928 – 1995)
“A world without huge regions of total wilderness would be a cage; a world without lions and tigers and vultures and snakes and elk and bison would be – will be – a human zoo. A high-tech slum” …. (Edward Abbey 1927 – 1989)
“We rich nations, for that is what we are, have an obligation not only to the poor nations, but to all the grandchildren of the world, rich and poor. We have not inherited this earth from our parents to do with it what we will. We have borrowed it from our children and we must be careful to use it in their interests as well as our own. Anyone who fails to recognise the basic validity of the proposition put in different ways by increasing numbers of writers, from Malthus to The Club of Rome, is either ignorant, a fool, or evil” …. (Moss Cass 1927 -)
“Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it’s time we control the population for the survival of the environment” …. (David Attenborough 1926 -)
“Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum” …. (Kurt Vonnegut 1922 – 2007)
“The cost of our success is the exhaustion of natural resources, leading to energy crises, climate change, pollution, and the destruction of our habitat. If you exhaust natural resources, there will be nothing left for your children. If we continue in the same direction, humankind is headed for some frightful ordeals, if not extinction” …. (Christian de Duve 1917 – 2013)
“We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do” …. (Barbara Ward 1914 – 1981)
“As man proceeds towards his announced goal of the conquest of nature, he has written a depressing record of destruction, directed not only against the earth he inhabits but against the life he shares with it” …. (Rachel Carson 1907 – 1964)
“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” …. (Marya Mannes 1904 – 1990)
“We are living beyond our means. As a people we have developed a life-style that is draining the earth of its priceless and irreplaceable resources without regard for the future of our children and people all around the world” …. (Margaret Mead 1901 – 1978)
“I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively, instead of skeptically and dictatorially.” …. (E.B. White 1899 – 1985)
“Civilisation says, ‘Nature belongs to man’. The Indian says, ‘No, man belongs to nature” …. (Grey Owl 1888 – 1938)
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better” …. (Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955)
“A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people” …. (Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882 – 1945)
“Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable” …. (Somerset Maugham 1874 – 1965)
“There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed” …. (Mohandas K. Gandhi 1869 – 1948)
“All my life through, the new sights of nature made me rejoice like a child” …. (Marie Curie 1867 – 1934)
“Human beings have been endowed with reason and a creative power so that they can add to what they have been given. But until now they have not been creative, but destructive. Forests are disappearing, rivers are drying up, wildlife is becoming extinct, the climate’s being ruined and with every passing day the earth is becoming poorer and uglier” …. (Anton Chekhov 1860 – 1904)
“Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature—but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other beings of being able to know and correctly apply its laws.” …. (Friedrich Engels 1820 – 1895)
“Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms” …. (George Eliot 1819 – 1880)
“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality and so on – have found none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear – what remains? Nature remains” …. (Walt Whitman 1819 – 1892)
“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth” …. (Henry Thoreau 1817 – 1862)
“What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered” …. (Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 – 1882)
“Nature is unforgiving; she will not agree to withdraw her flowers, her music, her scents or her rays of light before the abomination of man” …. (Victor Hugo 1802 – 1885)
“There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more” …. (George Gordon Byron 1788 – 1824)
“Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves. This we know: the earth does not belong to man – man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood that unites one’s family. All things are connected.” …. (Chief Seattle 1786 – 1866)
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity… and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself” …. (William Blake 1757 – 1827)
“Nature made man happy and good, but … society corrupts him and makes him miserable” …. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712 – 1778)
“I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs” …. (Joseph Addison 1672 – 1719)
“We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry” …. (John Webster 1580 – c1625)
“When I am amusing myself with my cat, who knows whether she isn’t amusing herself with me more than I am with her?” …. (Michel do Montaigne 1533 – 1592)
“You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, but she always comes hurrying back” …. (Horace 65 – 8 BC)
“When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money” …. (Native American saying)