Environmental History Quotes

• Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Nature

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  It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.

  Ansel Adams

  Nature, Fighting, Government

  "Playboy Interview: Ansel Adams". Interview with David Sheff, Playboy (p. 226), May 1, 1983.

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• 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

  Peace, Nature, Reflection

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  Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

  Margaret Mead

  Inspirational, Life, Friendship

  Margaret Mead, Robert B. Textor (2005). “The World Ahead: An Anthropologist Anticipates the Future”, p.12, Berghahn Books

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• The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

  Rachel Carson

  Nature, Zoos, Ocean

  Rachel Carson (2002). “Silent Spring”, p.19, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved.

  Richard Rogers

  Way Forward, Environmental Quality, Earth Day

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• Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.

  Jacques Yves Cousteau

  Ocean, Air, Aquariums

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• Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

  John Muir

  Learning, Air, Water

  John Muir (2015). “STEEP TRAILS: California - Utah - Nevada - Washington - Oregon - The Grand Canyon: Adventure Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Nature Essays and Wilderness Studies from the author of The Yosemite, Our National Parks, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf & Picturesque California”, p.45, e-artnow

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• Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

  Rachel Carson

  Strength, Beauty, Nature

  Rachel Carson (2011). “The Sense of Wonder”, p.41, Open Road Media

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• In the eternal youth of Nature, you may renew your own.

  John Muir

  Nature, Environmental, May

  John Muir (2015). “JOHN MUIR’S CALIFORNIA COLLECTION: My First Summer in the Sierra, Picturesque California, The Mountains of California, The Yosemite & Our National Parks (Illustrated): Adventure Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Nature Writings and Wilderness Essays”, p.234, e-artnow

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• We may be entering a new phase of history, a time when we begin to rediscover . . . the traditional teaching that power must entail restraint and responsibility, the ancient awareness that we are interdependent with all of nature and that our sense of community must take in the whole of creation.

  Donald Worster

  Teaching, Responsibility, Community

  Donald Worster (1988). “The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History”, p.20, Cambridge University Press

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• Environmental history was . . . born out of a moral purpose, with strong political commitments behind it, but also became, as it matured, a scholarly enterprise that had neither any simple, nor any single, moral or political agenda to promote. Its principal goal became one of deepening our understanding of how humans have been affected by their natural environment through time and, conversely, how they have affected that environment and with what results.

  Donald Worster

  Strong, Commitment, Simple

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• Environmental history fit[s] into the framework of New Left history. [It is] history "from the bottom up," except that here the exploited element [is] the biota and the land itself.

  Roderick Nash

  Land, Environmental, Elements

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• Environmental history... refer[s] to the past contact of man with his total habitat. . . . The environmental historian like the ecologist [s]hould think in terms of wholes, of communities, of interrelationships, and of balances.

  Roderick Nash

  Past, Men, Thinking

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• Evolving life must experience a vast range of possibilities, based on environmental histories so unpredictable that no realized route - the pathway to consciousness in the form of Homo sapiens or Little Green Men, for example - can be construed as a highway to heaven, but must be viewed as a tortuous track rutted with uncountable obstacles and festooned with innumerable alternative branches. Any reasonably precise repetition of our earthly route on another planet therefore becomes wildly improbable even in a trillion cases.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Men, Track, Heaven

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• Within the various acts of the ecodrama should be included scenes in which men's and women's roles come to center stage and scenes in which Nature 'herself' is an actress.

  Carolyn Merchant

  Men, Roles, Actresses

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• Environmental historians . . . insist that we have got to go . . . down to the earth itself as an agent and presence in history. Here we will discover even more fundamental forces at work over time. And to appreciate those forces we must now and then get out of parliamentary chambers, out of birthing rooms and factories, get out of doors altogether, and ramble into fields, woods, and the open air. It is time we bought a good set of walking shoes, and we cannot avoid getting some mud on them.

  Donald Worster

  Air, Doors, Shoes

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• There is little history in the study of nature, and there is little nature in the study of history. I want to show how we can remedy that cultural lag by developing a new perspective on the historian's enterprise, one that will make us Darwinians at last.

  Donald Worster

  Perspective, Environmental, Lag

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• I decided that now is the time to start doing the things that really interest me and I find important. It was in the 10 years of the MacArthur grant that I began working on my first book... and I began putting more work into environmental history.

  Jared Diamond

  Book, Years, Environmental

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• For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful antidote. Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference.

  Jared Diamond

  Differences, Environmental, Making A Difference

  Jared Diamond (2011). “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition”, p.308, Penguin

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• Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?

  B. F. Skinner

  Environmental, Doe, Poet

  B. F. Skinner (2015). “Cumulative Record: Definitive Edition”, p.480, B. F. Skinner Foundation

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