Environmentalism Quotes

I had fought on behalf of man against the sea, but I realised that it had become more urgent to fight on behalf of the sea against men.

~ Alain Bombard

The war for the Narmada valley is not just some exotic tribal war, or a remote rural war or even an exclusively Indian war. Its a war for the rivers and the mountains and the forests of the world. All sorts of warriors from all over the world, anyone who wishes to enlist, will be honored and welcomed. Every kind of warrior will be needed. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, judges, journalists, students, sportsmen, painters, actors, singers, lovers . . . The borders are open, folks! Come on in.

~ Arundhati Roy

I have never heard of an electromagnetically hypersensitive person recovering from the condition using shielding and Faraday cages, they just seem to become social lepers due to their increasing reactivity to the city environment and addicts to their shielded environment.

~ Steven Magee

I don't expect everyone to feel the same way that I do about land. For so many of us, the scars are still too fresh. Fields of cotton stretching to the horizon - land worked, sweated, and suffered over for the profit of others - probably don't engender warm feelings among most black people. But the land, in spite of its history, still holds hope for making good on the promises we thought it could, especially if we can reconnect to it. The reparations lie not in what someone will give us, but in what we already own. The land can grow crops for us as well as it does for others. It can yield loblolly pine and white oak for us as it has for others. And it can nurture wildlife and the spirit for us, just like it has for others.

~ J. Drew Lanham

The wild things and places belong to all of us. So while I can't fix the bigger problems of race in the United States - can't suggest a means by which I, and others like me, will always feel safe - I can prescribe a solution in my own small corner. Get more people of color out there. Turn oddities into commonplace. The presence of more black birders, wildlife biologists, hunters, hikers, and fisher-folk will say to others that we, too, appreciate the warble of a summer tanager, the incredible instincts of a whitetail buck, and the sound of wind in the tall pines. Our responsibility is to pass something on to those coming after. As young people of color reconnect with what so many of their ancestors knew - that our connections to the land run deep, like the taproots of mighty oaks; that the land renews and sustains us - maybe things will begin to change.

~ J. Drew Lanham

A foolish environmentalist wants to save nature from the greed of the market by exposing it to the tragedy of the commons. A smart environmentalist wants to save nature from the tragedy of the commons by exposing it to the greed of the market.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Understand: the task of an activist is not to negotiate systems of power with as much personal integrity as possible--it's to dismantle those systems.

~ Lierre Keith

Everything we personally own that’s made, sold, shipped, stored, cleaned, and ultimately thrown away does some environmental harm every step of the way, harm that we’re either directly responsible for or is done on our behalf.

~ Yvon Chouinard

You're either for the environment or against the environment.

~ Mommy Moo Moo

Mother Nature is challenging enough, let's keep oil drilling out of the picture.

~ Mommy Moo Moo

We still talk in terms of conquest,” she observed. “We still haven’t become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe.” Without hesitating, she delivered her final blow: “I think we’re challenged as mankind has never been challenged before, to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.

~ Mark H. Lytle

There's only three things you need to do when you are finished editing your book - Sleep! Sleep! and Sleep!

~ A. Louise Robertson

the assumptions that pollution is the price of progress or that we must choose between jobs and the environment have long limited our creative thinking about innovative solutions that can be good for the environment, the workers, and a healthy economy.

~ Annie Leonard

We are the planet, fully as much as water, earth, fire and air are the planet, and if the planet survives, it will only be through heroism. Not occasional heroism, a remarkable instance of it here and there, but constant heroism, systematic heroism, heroism as governing principle.

~ Russell Banks

Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.

~ David Brin

Extinction, the irrevocable loss of a species, causes pain that can never find relief. It is an ache that will pass from generation to generation for the rest of human history.

~ Callum Roberts

Thanks to the centrifugal pump, places like Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas had thrown on the garments of fertility for a century, pretending to greenery and growth as they mined glacial water from ten-thousand-year-old aquifers. They'd played dress-up-in-green and pretended it could last forever. They'd pumped up the Ice Age and spread it across the land, and for a while they'd turned their dry lands lush. Cotton, wheat, corn, soybeans -- vast green acreages, all because someone could get a pump going. Those places had dreamed of being different from what they were. They'd had aspirations. And then the water ran out, and they fell back, realizing too late that their prosperity was borrowed, and there would be no more coming.

~ Paolo Bacigalupi

If you consume animal derived foods or use other animal derived products you are by no stretch of the imagination an environmentalist. You are a rank hypocrite.

~ Will Hazlitt

Environmentalists and secular humanists insist that humans will destroy the planet. Corporate capitalists and many religious fundamentalists have no regard for wildlife and nature. Ultimately, this dualistic battle is based on false premises. In fact, this planet is more powerful than the human species.

~ Zeena Schreck

The generation that destroys the environment is not the generation that pays the price. That is the problem.

~ Wangari Maathai

She leaned into me, and I could feel her hot breath against my ear. 'I want you to eat me,' she whispered. 'I want you to eat me like you’re an angry Alaskan grizzly and I’m Timothy Treadwell.

~ Phillip Andrew Bennett Low

I wish people had as much enthusiasm about unfucking the planet as they did about sports. Who wins on Sunday is pretty goddamned trivial compared to just about anything else.

~ Michael Brewer

Nothing short of the end of the world would get our eco-conscious techies to toss their latest gadgets onto the street.

~ Susan Ee

Ethical vegetarians eat only plant-based food in order to show compassion toward animals and other humans and to benefit the planet.

~ Sharon Gannon

Seeing that humans in modern cultures were destroying their environment for the sake of self-indulgence, the Dokkalfar focused their attention on poorer nations, whose terrain still flourished. A century of ethnic cleansing, deforestation, and war assured the land weakened and humans stayed in abject poverty. The result was a perfect contrast. In certain parts of the world, millions of children died of starvation and disease while other countries held excesses and riches never before seen. Earth became a place of greedy extremes. Societies lost the ability to relate to one another, choosing instead to focus on their own. No one noticed the one common theme every culture held. The world itself was dying.

~ Elizabeth Isaacs

Stay awake. Spread awareness. Take action.

~ Eileen Anglin

We felt as though we had a responsibility to do something about it. So, we did.

~ Xiuhtezcatl Martinez

Where there is poverty, there will be destruction and exploitation by the corporations and governments benefitting from destroying our rainforests and trafficking wildlife.

~ Eileen Anglin

I really admire people in the public eye, who have influence or celebrity and they take a stand on something important, bring awareness and take compassionate action.When you have been blessed with abundance or are an influencer and you bring attention to a cause, or do something to help the world, that's using your blessings for the greater good. Those are the people who inspire me.

~ Eileen Anglin

I was born for this moment in Earth's history and if you believe you are a lightworker, so were you.

~ Eileen Anglin

We are the vanguard of our times. What we do in our lifetimes will set the future of all beings. The loving, conscious choices you make for yourself will effect the future of life and of souls uncounted. This is how important you are. And this is how important loving yourself and living your best life is.

~ Eileen Anglin

We need to consume less. A lot less. Less food, less energy, less stuff. Fewer cars, electric cars, cotton T-shirts, laptops, mobile phone upgrades. Far fewer.Yet, every decade, global consumption continues to increase relentlessly.

~ Stephen Emmott