Environment Quotes

We need not only open trading systems, but systems that work for people around the world – taking into account not only the bottom line, but the well-being of working men and women, the protection of children against sweatshop labor, and the protection of the environment.

Al Gore


A good person is the friend of all living things.

Mohandas Gandhi


At first I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rain forest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.

Chico Mendes


Twenty five years ago people could be excused for not knowing much about, or doing much, about climate change. Today we have no excuse.

Desmond Tutu


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

Aldo Leopol


Climate change will affect the basic elements of life for people around the world, food production, health, and the environment. Hundreds of millions of people could suffer hunger, water shortages and coastal flooding as the world warms.

Nicolas Stern


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


We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

David Brower


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

John Muir


Conservation means the wise use of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of all.

Gifford Pinchot


When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves.

David Orr


The truth is: the natural world is changing.  And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to defend it.

David Attenborough


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.

Mohandas Gandhi


Environmental protection doesn’t happen in a vacuum. One can’t separate the impact on the environment from the impact on our families and communities.

Jim Clyburn


We do not face a choice between protecting our environment or protecting our economy. We face a choice between protecting our economy by protecting our environment – or allowing environmental havoc to create economic havoc.

Robert Rubin


Like the canary in the coal mine, the climate changes already evident in the arctic are a call to action.

Susan Collins


The great work now, is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.

Thomas Berry


The task before us, if we would not perish, is to build the earth.

Teilhard de Chardin SJ


God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But He cannot save them from fools.

John Muir


Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

John Muir


In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world – the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.

John Muir


We either win this war to save our land, or we will be exterminated, because we have nowhere else to run to.

Kenule Saro-Wiw


We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.

Albert Schweitzer


A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all that is in need of help.

Albert Schweitzer


Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace… I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

Albert Schweitzer