Human Hubris
There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough,
quiet enough,
to pay attention
to the story.
~ Linda Hogan
Every day is Earth Day.
[Nature] knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve... As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.
— Robinson Jeffers
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. — Ansel Adams
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops. — Paul Brooks, The Pursuit of Wilderness
The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction. — Rachel Carson
If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
— Henry David Thoreau
I have not discovered anyone who publicly advocates pollution. Everybody says that he is against it. Yet the crisis deepens because all specific measures to remedy it are either undercut by 'legitimate' interest groups, or demands kinds of regional cooperation for which our political system does not provide. We deserve our increasing pollution because, according to our structure of values, so many other things have priority over achieving a viable ecology.
— Lynn White
Forest equals crop / Scenery equals recreation / Public equals money.
The shopkeeper's view of nature.
Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.
— Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
— Bill Vaughn
Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
— Kahlil Gibran
God loved the flowers and invented soil. Man loved the flowers and invented vases.
— Variation of a saying by Jacques Deval (God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.)
When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal.
When he destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman. — Joseph Wood Krutch
The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders. — Edward Abbey
We need a Bill of Rights against the 20th century poisoners of the human race.
— Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, an ardent naturalist
Modern technology
Owes ecology
An apology.
People need more than to understand their obligations to one another and to earth; they also need the feelings of such obligations. — Wendell Berry
More Views
