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“How do we sleep while our beds are burning?” ~ Midnight Oil
With yet another Earth Day on the horizon—and still as much negativity in the news as last year about the environment, climate change, and too much plastic everywhere—I offer 108 little reminders of what we have to lose, and hopefully a lot of motivation to make even one small change. May it be of benefit.
“I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic…and act as if the house was on fire. Because it is.” ~ Greta Thunberg
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” ~ John Muir
“It’s funny. When we were alive we spent much of our time staring up at the cosmos and wondering what was out there. We were obsessed with the moon and whether we could one day visit it. The day we finally walked on it was celebrated worldwide as perhaps man’s greatest achievement. But it was while we were there, gathering rocks from the moon’s desolate landscape, that we looked up and caught a glimpse of just how incredible our own planet was. Its singular astonishing beauty. We called her Mother Earth. Because she gave birth to us, and then we sucked her dry.”
~ Jon Stewart
“Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.” ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau
“The environment is where we all meet; where we all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share.” ~ Lady Bird Johnson
“The Earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations.” ~ John Paul II
“The ultimate test of man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.” ~ Gaylord Nelson
“What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
“Environmentally friendly cars will soon cease to be an option…they will become a necessity.” ~ Fujio Cho, Honorary Chairman of Toyota Motors
“We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.” ~ Barbara Ward
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” ~ Native American Proverb
“We live in a culture where people are more offended by ‘swear’ words and middle fingers than they are by famine, warfare and the destruction of our environment.” ~ unknown
“We rich nations, for that is what we are, have an obligation not only to the poor nations, but to all the grandchildren of the world, rich and poor. We have not inherited this earth from our parents to do with it what we will. We have borrowed it from our children and we must be careful to use it in their interests as well as our own. Anyone who fails to recognise the basic validity of the proposition put in different ways by increasing numbers of writers, from Malthus to The Club of Rome, is either ignorant, a fool, or evil.” ~ Moss Cass
“I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
“There’s so much pollution in the air now that if it weren’t for our lungs there’d be no place to put it all.” ~ Robert Orben
“The Earth has a skin and that skin has diseases, one of its diseases is called man.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
“Mother earth cried so much that she has pool of tears more than the land of happiness.” ~ Santosh Kalwar
“To damage the earth is to damage your children.” ~ Wendell Berry
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” ~ John Muir
“Today we’re dumping 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the environment, and tomorrow we will dump more, and there is no effective worldwide response. Until we start sharply reducing global-warming pollution, I will feel that I have failed.” ~ Al Gore
“Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest, living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment.” ~ Jane Goodall
“I see Earth! It is so beautiful.” ~ Yuri Gagarin
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” ~ Carl Sagan
“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” ~ Neil Armstrong
“National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.” ~ Carl Sagan
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
“For 200 years we’ve been conquering nature. Now we’re beating it to death.” ~ Tom McMillan
“It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.” ~ Ansel Adams
“I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.” ~ John Muir
“When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness.” ~ Kahlil Gibran
“Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life—that to the white man is an ‘unbroken wilderness.’
But for us there was no wilderness, nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly. Our faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings; the other sought the dominance of surroundings.
For us, the world was full of beauty; for the other, it was a place to be endured until he went to another world.
But we were wise. We knew that man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard.” ~ Chief Luther Standing Bear
“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
“I think it is insane that people are gathered here to talk about the climate and they arrive here in private jets.” ~ Greta Thunberg
“These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.” ~ John Muir
“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” ~ Cree Indian Proverb
“A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
“You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children.” ~ Greta Thunberg
“The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.” ~ Ralph Nader
“Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.” ~ Bill Vaughan
“Until a man duplicates a blade of grass, Nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge. Remedies from chemicals will never stand in favorable comparison with the products of Nature, the living cell of a plant, the final result of the rays of the sun, the mother of all life.” ~ Thomas Alva Edison
“The single biggest threat to our planet is the destruction of habitat and along the way loss of precious wildlife. We need to reach a balance where people, habitat, and wildlife can co-exist—if we don’t everyone loses…one day.” ~ Steve Irwin
“How is it possible that the most intellectual creature to ever walk the planet Earth is destroying its only home?” ~ Jane Goodall
“If we’re destroying our trees and destroying our environment and hurting animals and hurting one another and all that stuff, there’s got to be a very powerful energy to fight that. I think we need more love in the world. We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that.” ~ Ellen DeGeneres
“Western civilization is a loaded gun pointed at the head of this planet.” ~ Terence McKenna
“What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down”
~ Jim Morrison
“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet, and the winds long to play with your hair.” ~ Kahlil Gibran
“Time spent among trees is never time wasted.” ~ unknown
“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” ~ John Muir
“Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs,
To the silent wilderness,
Where the soul need not repress its music.” ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken.” ~ Leo Tolstoy
“To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.” ~ Helen Keller
“Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept us safe among them…The animals had rights—the right of man’s protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, the right to freedom, and the right to man’s indebtedness. This concept of life and its relations filled us with the joy and mystery of living; it gave us reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all.” ~ Chief Luther Standing Bear
“Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.” ~ Einstein
“Earth laughs in flowers.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Ô, Sunlight! The most precious gold to be found on Earth.” ~ Roman Payne
“The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see.” ~ Edward Abbey
“Earth, my dearest, oh believe me, you no longer need your spring times to win me over…Unspeakably, I have belonged to you, from the flush.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
“Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.” ~ George Washington Carver
“As I walk with Beauty
As I walk, as I walk,
The universe is walking with me,
In beauty it walks before me,
In beauty it walks behind me,
In beauty it walks below me,
In beauty it walks above me,
Beauty is on every side.”
~ Traditional Navajo Prayer
“The earth has its music for those who will listen.” ~ George Santayana
“Trees are Earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ~ Margaret Mead
“We have not come here to beg world leaders to care…We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the people.” ~ Greta Thunberg
“The environment and the economy are really both two sides of the same coin. If we cannot sustain the environment, we cannot sustain ourselves.” ~ Wangari Maathai
“John Muir, Earth—planet, Universe”
[Muir’s home address, as inscribed on the inside front cover of his first field journal]
“You are stealing our future.” ~ Greta Thunberg
“The Earth is what we all have in common.” ~ Wendell Berry
“Most people are on the world, not in it—have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them—undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.” ~ John Muir
“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 Lovelock
“It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god. It is more than blasphemy; it is dangerous. We can never be gods, after all—but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.” ~ N.K. Jemisin
“Earth rejoices our words, breathing and peaceful steps. Let every breath, every word and every step make the mother earth proud of us.” ~ Amit Ray
“The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. We just happen to to forget all that. Don’t you agree? Two-thirds of earth’s surface is ocean, and all we can see with the naked eye is the surface: the skin.” ~ Haruki Murakami
“Although the surface of our planet is two-thirds water, we call it the Earth. We say we are earthlings, not waterlings. Our blood is closer to seawater than our bones to soil, but that’s no matter. The sea is the cradle we all rocked out of, but it’s to dust that we go. From the time that water invented us, we began to seek out dirt. The further we separate ourselves from the dirt, the further we separate ourselves from ourselves. Alienation is a disease of the unsoiled.” ~ Tom Robbins
“I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” ~ Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” ~ unknown
“Stop fighting about who created the world and start fighting against the people who are trying to destroy it!” ~ Unknown
“I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use.” ~ Mother Teresa
“I hate plastic bottles. Just think about it before you buy one. We pay more for a gallon of water than we do for a gallon of gas. I think people will realize that water quality standards in most municipalities are as good or better for the stuff coming out of the tap than bottled water companies. You’ll save money and save the environment, too.” ~ Philippe Cousteau, Jr.
“He that plants trees loves others besides himself.” ~ Thomas Fulle
“Every time you buy organic you are persuading more farmers to grow organic.” ~ unknown
“It’s the little things that citizens do. That’s what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.” ~ Wangari Maathai
“It’s easier to call vegans crazy than it is to question your morality.” ~ unknown
“Grow food, not lawns.” ~ unknown
“You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them.” ~ Wangari Maathai
“Caring for the Earth is not a hippie thing, it’s a survival thing.” ~ unknown
“The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.” ~ Barry Commoner
“Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.” ~ Gary Snyder
“If you are fearful of the destruction of the environment, then learn to quit being an environmental parasite.” ~ Wendell Berry
“If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live.” ~ (probably not Albert Einstein)
“Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.” ~ Stewart Udall
“[The movement to address climate change is] about something deeper than [justice], it’s about solidarity. Human solidarity.” ~ Bill McKibben
“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of a difference you want to make.” ~ Jane Goodall
“I would request that my body in death be buried not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime.” ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
“If we are ever to halt climate change and conserve land, water and other resources, not to mention reduce animal suffering, we must celebrate Earth Day every day—at every meal.” ~ Ingrid Newkirk
“Man is still the greatest miracle and the greatest problem on this earth.” ~ David Sarnoff
“It is our collective and individual responsibility to protect and nurture the global family, to support its weaker members and to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live.” ~ Dalai Lama
“There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual part of themselves, that heartfelt knowledge that we are caretakers of this planet.” ~ Brooke Medicine Eagle
“To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.” ~ William Blake
“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.” ~ Frank Lloyd Wright
“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more.” ~ George Gordon, Lord Byron
“The human body resonates at the same frequency as Mother Earth. So instead of only focusing on trying to save the earth, which operates in congruence to our vibrations, I think it is more important to be one with each other. If you really want to remedy the earth, we have to mend mankind. And to unite mankind, we heal the Earth. That is the only way. Mother Earth will exist with or without us. Yet if she is sick, it is because mankind is sick and separated. And if our vibrations are bad, she reacts to it, as do all living creatures.” ~ Suzy Kassem
“The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren’t any space aliens. We can’t be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we’re not all there is. If so, we’re in big trouble.” ~ Ellen DeGeneres
“Save the Earth, it’s our only source of chocolate!” ~ unknown
“Why should I care about future generations? What have they ever done for me?” ~ Groucho Marx
What a wonderful world
“I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They’re really saying I love you
I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world”
~ Songwriters: George Weiss / Robert Thiele
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