We've all got to be involved in trying to
put this world together. I think if the world is put together, it's
not gonna be done by big organizations, it's gonna be done by millions upon
millions of little organizations, often local."
- Pete Seeger
"The greatest nation is Imagination - when coupled with Nature's beauty and truth."
- Bonnie Johanna Gisel
"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source
of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years
and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety
of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined,
is surely spiritual. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually
exclusive does a disservice to both."
- Carl Sagan
"Wilderness has nonhuman significance. It does not exist for snowshoe trips
or whitewater river expeditions. It would be important even if no humans ever visited.
Wild places have intrinsic value as habitats for creatures with biotic rights equal to our own. Wilderness is a place where we leave Earth alone; in the last analysis it is a gesture of planetary modesty."
- Roderick Nash in forward to Wilderness Ethics by Laura and Guy Waterman
"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."
- Gandhi
"Evolution has revealed that nature is not exclusively man-centred:
it is biocentric.... We have genetic relations with all living things... We
can claim no gross superiority and no isolated self-importance.... If we are
parts in the evolution... so do we lose our cosmic selfishness and we find
our place in the plan of things."
- Liberty Hyde Bailey, This Holy Earth (pp. 30-31).
"Theism and atheism are outdated, misleading, and unnecessarily
divisive concepts. Both came into being long before we learned that the entire
universe has been evolving, morphing over billions of years. I’m neither
a theist nor an atheist; I’m an emergentist. Nature isn’t merely
created, it’s creative. That fact changes everything."
- Michael Dowd
"If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them something more than the miracles of our technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it."
- President Lyndon B. Johnson, upon signing The Wilderness Act of 1964
"It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question."
- Eugene Ionesco
Do not say you do not have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"We have the power to change our world. It is not an issue of whether or not can we make a difference. The truth is that we do make a difference. Everything we do, say, and think shapes our reality. It is time that we join our bodies, minds, hearts, spirits, and voices and call for peace on the Earth and peace with the Earth. Please get involved in whatever ways you can, but please, do it now. The legacy of all life depends on it."
- Julia "Butterfly" Hill
“If the central pathology of our time is the radical discontinuity between
the human the the non-human, then the renewal of life on the planet must be
based on establishing the continuity between the human and the nonhuman as
a single integral community. In this new context every component of the Earth
community would have its rights in accord with the proper mode of its being
and its functional role. Trees would have tree rights, birds would have bird
rights, insects would have insect rights. In each case, the basic rights would
be for habitat and the opportunity of each being to fulfill its role in the
natural systems to which it belongs.”
- Thomas Berry
If of all thy worldly goods thou art bereft
And only two loaves of bread to thee are left,
Sell one; and with the dole
Buy Hyacinths to feed thy soul."
(- author unknown)
"This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise
somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is
forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise,
eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and
continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth
rolls."
- John Muir
Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit - the cosmos? The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge.
From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals. The fearfully good, the orthodox, of this laborious patch-work of modern civilization cry "Heresy" on every one whose sympathies reach a single hair's breadth beyond the boundary epidermis of our own species. Not content with taking all of earth, they also claim the celestial country as the only ones who possess the kind of souls for which that imponderable empire was planned.
This star, our own good earth, made many a successful journey around the heavens ere man was made, and whole kingdoms of creatures enjoyed existence and returned to dust ere man appeared to claim them. After human beings have also played their part in Creation's plan, they too may disappear without any general burning or extraordinary commotion whatever.
- John Muir
"Our little solos are a note in an immense chorus vibrating grandly through
the universe, a chorus which accepts and harmonizes the whir of the cricket
and the long drum-roll of the stars."
- Harriet Monroe (1860-1936)
"When you see the Earth from space, you don't see any divisions of nation-states
there. This may be the symbol of the new mythology to come."
- Joseph Campbell
1. The biosphere is a unity, a unique and indivisible ecosytem, and all of its diverse constituent parts are interdependent.
2. Humanity is part of nature and the community of life, and all life depends for survival and well-being on the functioning of natural systems.
3. Every life form is unique and possesses intrinsic value independent of its worth to humanity. Nature as a whole and the community of life warrant respect.
- “Summary of Principles in International Environmental and Sustainable Development Law and Related Reports” by Steven Rockefeller.
"If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing
up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have
a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive ...
- Eleonora Duse
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed."
- Gandhi
"Our Mother, whose body is the Earth, Sacred is thy being. Thy gardens
grow. Thy will be done in our cities, as it is in nature. Thanks be this day
for food, and air, and water. Forgive us our sins against Earth, as we are
learning to forgive one another. And surrender us not unto extinction, but
deliver us from our folly. For thine is the beauty, and the power, and all
life, from birth to death, from beginning to end. Amen. So be it. Forever.
Blessed be."
- Henry Horton
"I remember the taste of the vintage wine
From '63 through to '69
And I'm proud of the things we believed in then
If I had the chance I'd go around again
Oh I tell you
We were young and free
Oh I'll tell you
'Cause I was there you see
And I look to the future with open arms
- The Moody Blues, "Vintage Wine" on Sur Le Mer album
"The consensus of the scientific community is as follows:
The world's scientific community is now pointing out that we have only one
Earth and that our global society is running a vast and dangerous experiment
on it. If the experiment goes wrong, there will be no way to rerun it. In
the end, we can only hope that the voices of science and reason will prevail
over the brownlash and that the public and political leaders, who enjoy the
many benefits that have been provided by the scientific community, will heed
its warnings."
- Paul and Anne Ehrlich in Betrayal of Science and Reason
"The battle we have fought, and are still fighting for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong, and we cannot expect to see the end of it. ... So we must count on watching and striving for these trees, and should always be glad to find anything so surely good and noble to strive for."
- John Muir
"We are not building this country of ours for a day, it is to last through
the ages."
- Theodore Roosevelt
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