I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. 
~ Elwyn Brooks White, Essays of E.B. White, 1977

Random Rainforest Fact: The rosy periwinkle, rescued from certain 
extinction in Madagascar, has saved thousands of lives. 
Vincristine from the rosy periwinkle has enabled an 80% remission 
rate for some forms of childhood leukemia.

"everything on the earth has a purpose,
every disease an herb to cure it,
and every person a mission.
This is the Indian theory of existence."
~ Mourning Dove Salish

All art is but imitation of nature.
~ Seneca

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.
~ John Lubbock

Modern technology
Owes ecology
An apology.
~ Alan M. Eddison

Let us... permit nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we. 
~ Montaigne

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew. 
~ Marshall McLuhan, 1964

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. 
~ Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

So bleak is the picture... that the bulldozer and not the atomic bomb 
may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century. 
~ Philip Shabecoff, New York Times Magazine, 4 June 1978

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her. 
~ Francis Bacon

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

Dig a trench through a landfill and you will see layers of phone books like geographical strata or layers of cake.... During a recent landfill dig in Phoenix, I found newspapers dating from 1952 that looked so fresh you might read one over breakfast. 
~ William Rathje, The Economist, 8 September 1990

Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom - and lakes die. 
~ Gil Stern

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
~ Mark Twain

Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day. 
~ Stephen Jay Gould, "Our Allotted Lifetimes," The Panda's Thumb, 1980

A warrior is always joyful because his love is unalterable and his beloved, the earth, embraces him and bestows upon him inconceivable gifts.
-- Don Juan, Tales of Power by Carlos Castaneda

Instead of an intellectual search, there was suddenly a very deep gut feeling that something was different. It occurred when looking at Earth and seeing this blue-and-white planet floating there, and knowing it was orbiting the Sun, seeing that Sun, seeing it set in the background of the very deep black and velvety cosmos, seeing - rather, knowing for sure - that there was a purposefulness of flow, of energy, of time, of space in the cosmos - that it was beyond man's rational ability to understand, that suddenly there was a nonrational way of understanding that had been beyond my previous experience.

There seems to be more to the universe than random, chaotic, purposeless movement of a collection of molecular particles.

On the return trip home, gazing through 240,000 miles of space toward the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious.
-- Edgar Mitchell, USA Astronaut

 

"Rivers have what man most respects and longs for in his own life and thought - a capacity for renewal and replenishment, continual energy, creativity, and cleansing."
~John M. Kauffman EPA Journal May 1981

"Earth gives life and seeks the man who walks gently upon it."
~Hopi Legend

"Consider that the word ecology comes from the Greek word for "home" (eikos).  An ecological awakening is an awakening about our true home.  And our true home is the Unverse itself."

~Matthew Fox, The Reinvention of Work; Harper, 1994

"Those (now alive) born before 1950 have seen more population growth during their lifetimes, than occured during the preceding 4 million years."
~State of the World 1996

"Ecotourism is travel with a purpose.  Ecotourists travel to exotic locales and play an important role in helping to save endangered species or aiding researchers and ecologists in the field.  The Sierra Club is one of the several organizations that offer such opportunities."
~Earth Keepers Leslie Baer-Brown & Bob Rhein       Mercury House 1995

"We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do."
~Barbara Ward, Only One Earth 1972

"In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia."
~Charles A. Lindberg, Life December 1967

"In the game of life we only have one world to live on...when it's gone...the game's over."
~Man Seok Salazar a.k.a. "Fil-Kor" (Fillipino-Korean)

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