Environmentalism Quotes

• We must set an example now and move environmentalism from being the philosophy of a passionate minority ... to a way of life that automatically integrates ecology into governmental policy and normal living standards.

  Leonardo DiCaprio

  Philosophy, Moving, Example

  "50 people who could save the planet" by John Vidal, David Adam, Jonathan Watts, Leo Hickman, Ian Sample, www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2008.

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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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• I think the greatest challenge in environmentalism and the most rewarding challenge is trying to figure out how humans can meet their needs while protecting the environment.

  Gale Norton

  Thinking, Challenges, Environmental

  Interview with Alex Pasquariello, www.hcn.org. May 24, 2004.

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• Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Earth Day, Survival

  Ayn Rand (1999). “The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution”, p.226, Penguin

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• So many people think you have to be rich and famous to really create an impact, and it's just not true. Especially when it comes to environmentalism.

  Eva Longoria

  Thinking, Impact, People

  "More Than a Desperate Housewife, Eva Longoria Talks Activism". Interview with Avital Andrews, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 6, 2017.

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• We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.

  Wendell Berry

  Effort, Would Be, World

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• I think that environmentalists have been terribly misunderstood over the years. I believe that anyone that cares about the earth is an environmentalist. People that make a decision to not throw garbage out on the street because they consider the possible impacts. That's environmentalism in its most basic form.

  Jerome Ringo

  Believe, Thinking, Impact

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Part of the irony of environmentalism is questing for solutions when you know you're part of the problem.

  Diane Ackerman

  Irony, Problem, Knows

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds”, p.156, Vintage

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• One planet, one experiment.

  E. O. Wilson

  Future, Vision, Environmental

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• Environmentalism is not about the environment. It is about people. It is about a vision for a better life-for people.

  Colin Beavan

  People, Vision, Environment

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• If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.

  Barry Commoner

  Fads, Lasts, Ifs

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• It's really important to me to show the interconnectedness of things. I always try to illustrate how environmentalism, humanitarianism, animal rights - all those things - are one and the same.

  Daryl Hannah

  Animal, Rights, Important

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• It is a complete embarrassment and literally shameful that the country that first of all invented environmentalism and gave it to the world, and second of all did all the science originally around climate and global warming and presented that to the world, has been the country that has refused to participate in a constructive way to the solution.

  Bill McKibben

  Country, Climate, World

  Source: theotherjournal.com

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• You know what happens when windmills collapse into the sea? A splash.

  Bill Maher

  Sea, Environmental, Windmills

  "Gulf oil spill: A hole in the world" by Naomi Klein, www.theguardian.com. June 18, 2010.

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• Instead of taking environmentalism away from the left, conservatives condemn it as a counsel of doom.

  Christopher Lasch

  Fate, Doom, Left

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• The global environment crisis is, as we say in Tennessee, real as rain, and I cannot stand the thought of leaving my children with a degraded earth and a diminished future.

  Al Gore

  Children, Real, Rain

  Al Gore (2013). “Earth in the Balance: Forging a New Common Purpose”, p.16, Routledge

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• As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants. Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism.

  Vaclav Klaus

  Democracy, Ambitious, Global Warming

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• Environmentalism opposes reckless innovation and makes conservation the central order of business.

  Christopher Lasch

  Order, Innovation, Conservation

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• To people who think of themselves as God's houseguests, American enterprise must seem arrogant beyond belief. Or stupid. A nation of amnesiacs, proceeding as if there were no other day but today. Assuming the land could also forget what had been done to it.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Stupid, Thinking, Land

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• Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology, if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming.

  Vaclav Klaus

  Men, Weapons, Becoming

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• Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism.

  Vaclav Klaus

  Ambitious, Communism, Threat

  "Monbiot's royal flush: Top 10 climate change deniers" by George Monbiot, www.theguardian.com. March 9, 2009.

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• What is new is that environmentalism intensely illuminates the need to confront the corporate domain at its most powerful and guarded point - the exclusive right to govern the systems of production.

  Barry Commoner

  Powerful, Environmental, Needs

  Interview with Alan Hall, www.scientificamerican.com. June 23, 1997.

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• Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Sky, Earth Day

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.217, Courier Corporation

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• Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.

  David Foreman

  Race, Environmental, Earth

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• We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

  Stephen Schneider

  Libertarian Party, Scary, Doubt

  "Apocalypse Abuse and 'Climate Doomism'" by Ronald Bailey, reason.com. July 13, 2017.

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