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Quotes by Environmentalist
"Always leave enough time in your life to do something that makes you happy, satisfied, even joyous. That has more of an effect on economic well-being than any other single factor."
55
"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."
55
"Any euphemism ceases to be euphemistic after a time and the true meaning begins to show through. It's a losing game, but we keep on trying."
54
"The attention of a traveller, should be particularly turned, in the first place, to the various works of Nature, to mark the distinctions of the climates he may explore, and to offer such useful observations on the different productions as may occur."
54
"Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution."
53
"My progress was rendered delightful by the sylvan elegance of the groves, chearful meadows, and high distant forests, which in grand order presented themselves to view."
53
"I believe that the average guy in the street will give up a great deal, if he really understands the cost of not giving it up. In fact, we may find that, while we're drastically cutting our energy consumption, we're actually raising our standard of living."
53
"The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual."
53
"We tried burying the waste at sea and the concrete cannisters that held it cracked open."
53
"The European nations take climate change very seriously."
53
"To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."
53
"Interestingly, the oil companies know very well that in less than 30 years they will not only be charging very high prices, but that they will be uncompetitive with renewables."
53
"Some otherwise sane scientists have seriously proposed that we tuck this deadly garbage under the edges of drifting continents but how can they be sure the moving land masses will climb over the waste and not just push it forward?"
53
"Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land."
53
"Apollo 13, as you may remember, gave us a reactor that is bubbling away right now somewhere in the Pacific. It's supposed to be bubbling away on the moon, but it's in the Pacific Ocean instead."
53
"Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum."
52
"I sort of kept my hand in writing and went to work for the Sierra Club in '52, walked the plank there in '69, founded Friends of the Earth and the League of Conservation Voters after that."
52
"Is the minor convenience of allowing the present generation the luxury of doubling its energy consumption every 10 years worth the major hazard of exposing the next 20,000 generations to this lethal waste?"
52
"The risk presented by these lethal wastes is like no other risk, and we should not be expected to accept it or to project it into the future in order for manufacturers and utilities to make a dollar killing now."
52
"In an approximate way, the logic of commons has been understood for a long time, perhaps since the discovery of agriculture or the invention of private property in real estate."
52
"One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring."
52
"Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed."
52
"Few people have ever seriously wished to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by passions and touched with that ceremonial grace which is impossible without some affectionate loyalty to traditional form and ceremonies."
51
"When people say, 'You're not being realistic,' they're just trying to tag some thoughts that they can't otherwise handle."
51
"If we bestow but a very little attention to the economy of the animal creation, we shall find manifest examples of premeditation, perseverance, resolution, and consumate artifice, in order to effect their purpose."
51
"What we are missing, utterly and completely, in this government is accountability."
51
"Bring diversity back to agriculture. That's what made it work in the first place."
51
"Until four years ago, in fact, I was absolutely in love with the atom."
51
"I think an old style of addressing environmental problems is ebbing, but the rise of the so-called conservative, political movement in this country is not a trend towards the future but a reaction to this very broad shift that we are undergoing."
50
"Their elegant shape, showy colours, and slow, sailing mode of flight, make them very attractive objects, and their numbers are so great that they form quite a feature in the physiognomy of the forest, compensating for the scarcity of flowers."
50
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."
50
"We are at the edge of an abyss and we're close to being irrevocably lost."
50
"The city and province were given up to anarchy; the coloured people, elated with victory, proclaimed the slaughter of all whites, except the English, French, and American residents."
50
"Once again I stopped listening to the news this week."
50
"All I know about thermal pollution is that if we continue our present rate of growth in electrical energy consumption it will simply take, by the year 2000, all our freshwater streams to cool the generators and reactors."
49
"If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either."
49
"In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them."
49
"What happens when the guy who runs the reactor gets out of bed wrong or decides, for some reason, that he wants to override his instruction sheet some afternoon?"
49
"The power of imagination makes us infinite."
49
"The more we pour the big machines, the fuel, the pesticides, the herbicides, the fertilizer and chemicals into farming, the more we knock out the mechanism that made it all work in the first place."
49
"Even if you build the perfect reactor, you're still saddled with a people problem and an equipment problem."
48
"The poor monkey, quietly seated on the ground, seemed to be in sore trouble at this display of anger."
48
"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."
48
"Information from destructive activities going back a hundred years right up until today is being incorporated into the system. And as that happens the underlying framework of industrialism is collapsing and causing disintegration."
48
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