Inspirational Environmental Quotes

We say we love flowers, yet we pluck them. We say we love trees, yet we cut them down. And people still wonder why some are afraid when told they are loved.

We will look upon the earth and her sister planets as being with us, not for us.

We owe our lives to the sun... How is it, then, that we feel no gratitude?

For many of us, water simply flows from a faucet, and we think little about it beyond this point of contact. We have lost a sense of respect for the wild river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for the intricate web of life that water supports.

The planet is in distress and all of the attention is on Paris Hilton.

I feel more confident than ever that the power to save the planet rests with the individual consumer.

He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the plants, the waters, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments - is the rich and royal man.

The sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away.

To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.

When people can see a vision and simultaneously recognize what can be done step by step in a concrete way to achieve it, they will begin to feel encouragement and enthusiasm instead of fright.

Let the clean air blow the cobwebs from your body. Air is medicine.

To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.

For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.

As many know, the Chinese expression for "crisis" consists of two characters side by side. The first is the symbol for "danger," the second the symbol for "opportunity."

Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

Environmentally friendly cars will soon cease to be an option...they will become a necessity.

There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use.

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.

If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.

Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so called scientific knowledge.

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.

The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

The poetry of the earth is never dead.

We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.

The wealth of the nation is its air, water, soil, forests, minerals, rivers, lakes, oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats and biodiversity... that's all there is. That's the whole economy. That's where all the economic activity and jobs come from. These biological systems are the sustaining wealth of the world.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.

We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.

As Joanna Macy reminds us, "Information by itself can increase resistance [to engagement], deepening the sense of apathy and powerlessness." Stories about particular individuals and specific situations usually have the opposite effect. By giving unwieldy problems a human face, they also bring them down to a human-and thus manageable-scale.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.

All things are bound together. All things connect.

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.

Forests are the lungs of our land.

The ultimate test of a man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

It's not just global warming, it's not just a loss of biodiversity, it's not just the pollution of our oceans and the clearing of our rainforests and all these complicated systems, The [11th Hour] movie talks about the world economy, it talks about politics, it talks about personal transformation and environmental consciousness that we need to have in this generation to implement a lot of these changes that need to occur.