Environmental Pollution Quotes

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  Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented.

  Barry Commoner

  Environmental, Disease, Pollution

  "At 90, an Environmentalist From the '70s Still Has Hope". Interview With Thomas Vinciguerra, www.nytimes.com. June 19, 2007.

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• We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children

  Chief Seattle

  Motivational, Wisdom, Peace

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  The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.

  Ross Perot

  Dirty, Men, Rivers

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  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.

  Aldo Leopold

  Inspiring, Respect, Nature

  A Sand County Almanac foreword (1949)

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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

  254 Copy quote
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  The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future.

  Marya Mannes

  Revenge, Abuse, Environmental

  Marya Mannes (1958). “More in Anger”

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• Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites.

  William Ruckelshaus

  Nature, Lunch, Pollution Control

  Business Week, June 18, 1990.

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• People 'over-produce' pollution because they are not paying for the costs of dealing with it.

  Ha-Joon Chang

  People, Cost, Sustainable Energy

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• Environmental pollution is a blight on people's quality of life and a trouble that weighs on their hearts.

  Li Keqiang

  Life, Heart, People

  "China sets 7 per cent growth target, but challenges lie ahead". "PM", www.abc.net.au. March 5, 2015.

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• Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.

  Chief Seattle

  Life, Lonely, Nature

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  Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Life, Beauty

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.15, St. Martin's Press

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• When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

  John Muir

  Motivational, Wisdom, Nature

  John Muir (2011). “My First Summer in the Sierra: Illustrated Edition”, p.104, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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  Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Business, Ignorant, Littering

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• 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

  Fun, Air, Earth Day

  "Waiting to Inhale: Don't Take a Breath Without the Report From Our Air Pollution Control District". The San Diego Union-Tribune, January 31, 2008.

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• 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

  Today, Air Quality, Tomorrow

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• The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials.

  Rachel Carson

  Men, Rivers, Air

  Rachel Carson (2002). “Silent Spring”, p.6, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We say we love flowers, yet we pluck them. We say we love trees, yet we cut them down. And people still wonder why some are afraid when told they are loved.

  Paul Morley

  Mother, Flower, Cutting

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  The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world-the very nature of its life.

  Rachel Carson

  Nature, Men, Sea

  Rachel Carson (2002). “Silent Spring”, p.6, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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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• Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.

  Henrik Tikkanen

  Time, Future, Kids

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• We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.

  Aldo Leopold

  Respect, Nature, Community Living

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.8, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?

  Robert Redford

  Nature, Thinking, Earth Day

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• Even in the most beautiful music, there are some silences, which are there so we can witness the importance of silence. Silence is more important than ever, as life today is full of noise. We speak a lot about environmental pollution but not enough about noise pollution.

  Andrea Bocelli

  Music, Beautiful, Silence

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• All things are bound together. All things connect.

  Chief Seattle

  Native American, Web Of Life, Earth Day

  Seattle (Chief) (1980). “How can one sell the air?: the manifesto of an Indian chief”, Book Publishing Company (TN)

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• You show me pollution and I will show you people who are not paying their own way, people who are stealing from the public, people who are getting the public to pay their costs of production. All environmental pollution is a subsidy.

  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  People, Environmental, Cost

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