Ecology Quotes

We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.

~ Stephen Jay Gould

[A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.

~ Daniel Quinn

On a grander scale, when a society segregates itself, the consequences affect the economy, the emotions, and the ecology. That's one reason why it's easy for pro-lifers to eat factory-raised animals that disrespect everything sacred about creation. And that is why it's easy for rabid environmentalists to hate chainsaws even though they snuggle into a mattress supported by a black walnut bedstead.

~ Joel Salatin

Diversity is a survival factor for the community itself. A community of a hundred million species can survive anything short of total global catastrophe. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature drop of twenty degrees—which would be a lot more devastating than it sounds. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature rise of twenty degrees. But a community of a hundred species or a thousand species has almost no survival value at all.

~ Daniel Quinn

No one species shall make the life of the world its own.' … That's one expression of the law. Here's another: 'The world was not made for any one species.

~ Daniel Quinn

This law … defines the limits of competition in the community of life. You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war.

~ Daniel Quinn

This is considered almost holy work by farmers and ranchers. Kill off everything you can't eat. Kill off anything that eats what you eat. Kill off anything that doesn't feed what you eat.It IS holy work, in Taker culture. The more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world, and that makes it just about the holiest work there is. Once you exempt yourself from the law of limited competition, everything in the world except your food and the food of your food becomes an enemy to be exterminated.

~ Daniel Quinn

The evolution revolution is here. Global sense makes common sense.

~ Judah Freed

We are the intelligent elite among animal life on earth and whatever our mistakes, [Earth] needs us. This may seem an odd statement after all that I have said about the way 20th century humans became almost a planetary disease organism. But it has taken [Earth] 2.5 billion years to evolve an animal that can think and communicate its thoughts. If we become extinct she has little chance of evolving another.

~ James E. Lovelock

...It's not that the worm forgives the plough; it gives it no mind. (Pain occurs, in passing.) (lines 37-39 in the poem 'Fantasia on a Theme from IKEA')

~ Philip Gross

It was not enough that food aplenty was within Man’s grasp: he wanted more.It was not enough that prey surrendered themselves to Man according to the natural order: Man wanted to cook his prey. Man had discovered fire when lightning stuck and set a tree or two alight, but he was clumsy and greedy and stupid and could not keep the flame alive

~ David Bowles

In my pursuit of historical ecology, I find the pleasure of reading history.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Water is sacred to all Human Beings. If you do not have water, you cannot have life. I always remember to honor and pour the water because it is traditional.

~ Autumn Morning Star

If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Men say they know many things;But lo! they have taken wings, —The arts and sciences,And a thousand appliances;The wind that blowsIs all that any body knows

~ Henry David Thoreau

Can you imagine a scenario, given our present circumstances, in which human life will actually survive and be here in a thousand years?

~ Daniel J. Rice

We need myths that will help us to identify with all our fellow-beings, not simply with those who belong to our ethnic, national or ideological tribe. We need myths that help us to realize the importance of compassion, which is not always regarded as sufficiently productive or efficient in our pragmatic, rational world. We need myths that help us to create a spiritual attitude, to see beyond our immediate requirements, and enable us to experience a transcendent value that challenges our solipsistic selfishness. We need myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, instead of merely using it as a 'resource.' This is crucial, because unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that is able to keep abreast of our technological genius, we will not save our planet.

~ Karen Armstrong

So you know that all living things share the same energy source and that every action that humans do to nature will affect everything on this planet.

~ Alison Cooklin

We can all avoid travel that is unnecessary we do not need to travel around the world when the source of all joy and all beauty is right within us.

~ Eknath Easwaran

Fundamentally, the task is to articulate not just an alternative set of policy proposals but an alternative worldview to rival the one at the heart of the ecological crisis - embedded in interdependence rather than hyper-individualism, reciprocity rather than dominance, and cooperation rather than hierarchy. This is required not only to create a political context to dramatically lower emissions, but also to help us cope with the disasters we can no longer avoid. Because in the hot and stormy future we have already made inevitable through our past emissions, an unshakable belief in the equal rights of all people and a capacity for deep compassion will be the only things standing between civilization and barbarism.

~ Naomi Klein

A thought that stayed with me was that I had entered a private place in the earth. I had seen exposed nearly its oldest part. I had lost my sense of urgency, rekindled a sense of what people were, clambering to gain access to high waterfalls and a sense of our endless struggle as a species to understand time and to estimate the consequences of our acts.

~ Barry López

I think of two landscapes- one outside the self, the other within. The external landscape is the one we see-not only the line and color of the land and its shading at different times of the day, but also its plants and animals in season, its weather, its geology… If you walk up, say, a dry arroyo in the Sonoran Desert you will feel a mounding and rolling of sand and silt beneath your foot that is distinctive. You will anticipate the crumbling of the sedimentary earth in the arroyo bank as your hand reaches out, and in that tangible evidence you will sense the history of water in the region. Perhaps a black-throated sparrow lands in a paloverde bush… the smell of the creosote bush….all elements of the land, and what I mean by “the landscap

~ Barry López

Humanity might bless earth--if we work with and for creation, if we master our selfishness in service to all our neighbors, if we cultivate wildness as a kind of wealth.

~ Willis Jenkins

Lava oozed up from the centre of the crater like blood from a wound. As the flaming lava touched the water it hissed and groaned. She feared she would be boiled alive.

~ Alison Cooklin

Very often ambition and entrepreneurial drive, in combination, beat brilliance.

~ Edward O. Wilson

Old-growth forests met no needs. They simply were, in a way that bore no questions about purpose or value. They could not be created by men. They could not even be understood by men. They had too many parts that were interconnected in too many ways. Change one part and everything else would change, but in ways that were unpredictable and often inexplicable. This unpredictability removed such forests from the realm of human perspectives and values. The forest did not need to justify or explain itself. It existed outside of instrumental human considerations.

~ Steve Olson

We can only predict the future ecological changes, by emergence of the past into the present.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

We study the past history, with the conscience of the present environmental changes; we can only predict the future ecological changes, by emergence of the past into the present.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The marketplace is an institution that teaches self-advancement, private acquisition, and the domination of nature. Its way of thinking is incompatible with the round river. Ecological harmony is a nonmarket value that takes a collective will to achieve.

~ Donald Worster

Don't you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?

~ D.h. Lawrence

But, to love nature and to hate humanity is illogical. Humanity is part of the whole. To truly love the world is also to love human ingenuity and playfulness. Nature does not need to be cleansed of human artifacts to be beautiful or coherent. Yes, we should be less greedy, untidy, wasteful, and shortsighted. But let us not turn responsibility into self-hatred. Our biggest failing is, after all, lack of compassion for the world. Including ourselves.

~ David George Haskell

What need does the earth have of us?

~ Pope Francis

You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light.

~ Edward Abbey

as jolaha ka maram na jana, jinh jag ani pasarinhh tana;dharti akas dou gad khandaya, chand surya dou nari banaya;sahastra tar le purani puri, ajahu bine kathin hai duri;kahai kabir karm se jori, sut kusut bine bhal kori;No one could understand the secret of this weaver who, coming into existence, spread the warp as the world; He fixed the earth and the sky as the pillars, and he used the sun and the moon as two shuttles; He took thousands of stars and perfected the cloth; but even today he weaves, and the end is difficult to fathom.Kabir says that the weaver, getting good or bad yarn and connecting karmas with it, weaves beautifully.

~ Kabir

Out yonder they may curse, revile, and torture one another, defile all the human instincts, make a shambles of creation (if it were in their power), but here, no, here, it is unthinkable, here there is abiding peace, the peace of God, and the serene security created by a handful of good neighbors living at one with the creature world.

~ Henry Miller

Labels bias our perceptions, thinking, and behavior. A label or story can either separate us from, or connect us to, nature. For our health and happiness, we must critically evaluate our labels and stories by their effects.

~ Michael J. Cohen

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement.

~ Henry David Thoreau

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?

~ Henry David Thoreau

The race is now on between the technoscientific and scientific forces that are destroying the living environment and those that can be harnessed to save it. . . . If the race is won, humanity can emerge in far better condition than when it entered, and with most of the diversity of life still intact.

~ Edward O. Wilson

A dam is monumentally static; it tries to bring a river under control, to regulate its seasonal pattern of floods and low flow.

~ Patrick Mccully