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Quotes by Environmentalist

"I did a salad, but I didn't do a garden."

"Along the borders to Ethiopia and Somalia, anarchy reigns, the police and military have retreated quite some distance."

"One should not forget that there are very few surviving items from this period, often just single, small bones, a tooth, a sliver of the skull. Categorizing these pieces can be very difficult."

"We think that groups of between 30 and 40 early men would have settled in an area measuring a hundred square kilometers."
Men,

"Whether or not all this came to pass in an East African ditch, I wouldn't like to say. Perhaps it happened in North Africa or further west, but Africa was definitely the place."

"Paleoanthropology is not a science that ends with the discovery of a bone. One has to have the original to work with. It is a life-long task."

"Elephants can live to an age of up to 70 or 80 years and they have a good memory. It could be they come across an area that is experiencing a drought. Then they continue on their path and run into people."

"Earlier, 100,000 elephants lived in Kenya and we didn't have any noteworthy problem with it. The problem that we have is not that there are now more elephants."
Now,

"We are concerned that, in a few years time, this place of discovery, with its wealth of human fossils, the like of which can be found nowhere else in the world, could be completely destroyed."

"The elephants were being slaughtered in masses. Some were even killed in the vicinity of big tourist hotels."

"It is virtually impossible to control Northern Kenya, which is populated chiefly by migrant nomads."

"A number of scientists with greatly different backgrounds can come up with completely different assessments. The discussions or controversies are endless. Once a year, we try to bring the most important discoverers together to exchange their experiences and knowledge."

"I would hazard a guess that we have found fossilized human remains of at least a thousand different specimens in South and East Africa, more or less complete at that. I think this is where the prelude to human history was primarily played out."

"Primates need good nutrition, to begin with. Not only fruits and plants, but insects as well."

"We hope to find more pieces of the puzzle which will shed light on the connection between this upright, walking ape, our early ancestor, and modern man."

"I can't think of any other region in the world which is such a vast source of fossils."

"The land is not in the least bit fertile and yet the cattle herds grow larger and larger. A cow represents capital investment here."

"For fossils to thrive, certain favorable circumstances are required. First of all, of course, remnants of life have to be there. These then need to be washed over with water as soon as possible, so that the bones are covered with a layer of sediment."

"To investigate the history of man's development, the most important finds are, of course, hominid fossils."

"Sadly, I am not able to take part in the fieldwork myself so much anymore, as both of my legs were amputated following an airplane crash twelve years ago."

"The problem is that during the 1980s, a decade of heavy poaching, the elephants retreated to safer areas. And now people have moved into the corridors once used by the elephants."


"Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left."


"Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble."

"To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world."

"On the recollection of so many and great favours and blessings, I now, with a high sense of gratitude, presume to offer up my sincere thanks to the Almighty, the Creator and Preserver."

"You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere."


"The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February."


"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."


"Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land."

"Industry is fortune's right hand, and frugality its left."

"Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them."

"However, I think the major opposition to ecology has deeper roots than mere economics; ecology threatens widely held values so fundamental that they must be called religious."

"The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort."


"Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without."

"Nothing is invented and perfected at the same time."

"Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm."

"The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected."

"A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant - rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance - but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself."

"The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them."

"In 1994 the U.S. Court of Appeals decided in the case of Oliver North to permit the release of grand jury evidence, because it had already been so thoroughly leaked."


"One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring."


"Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rise and set, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is."

"Having contemplated this admirable grove, I proceeded towards the shrubberies on the banks of the river, and though it was now late in December, the aromatic groves appeared in full bloom."

"The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love."

"The poor monkey, quietly seated on the ground, seemed to be in sore trouble at this display of anger."

"We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital."


"Birds have wings; they're free; they can fly where they want when they want. They have the kind of mobility many people envy."

"There have been high crimes and misdemeanors, but they have been committed by the special prosecutor and the Congress, not the president."
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