Enviromental Quotes

Whoever wants his judgment to be believed, should express it coolly and dispassionately; for all vehemence springs from the will. And so the judgment might be attributed to the will and not to knowledge, which by its nature is cold.

If you have love you will do all things well.

When the heart is flooded with love there is no room in it for fear, for doubt, for hesitation.

Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.

He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality.

Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.

A message prepared in the mind reaches a mind; a message prepared in a life reaches a life.

The artist...is the voice of the people.

The earth is literally our mother, not only because we depend on her for nurture and shelter but even more because the human sepcies has been shaped by her in the womb of evolution. Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature.

In times of danger large groups rise to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, courage and sacrifice . . . Mankind will be refashioned and history rewritten when this law is understood and obeyed.

Don't wait for anyone to deputize you or authorize you or empower you. You have to just start out with yourself...and put one foot in front of the other.

Someone who does not draw strength from himself and who is incapable of finding the meaning of his life within himself will...seek the map to his own orientation somewhere outside himself-in some ideology, organization, or society, and then, however active he may appear to be, he is merely waiting, depending. He waits to see what others will do, or what roles they will assign to him, and he depends on them-and if they don't do anything or if they botch things, he succumbs to disillusion, despair, and ultimately, resignation.

Lasting change happens when people see for themselves that a different way of life is more fulfilling than their present one.

Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis - once that crisis can be recognized and understood.

I want us all to face our fears and stop behaving like our goal in life is to merely survive. "Surviving" is for wimps and game show contestants stranded in the jungle or on a desert island. You are not stranded. You own the store....You deserve better.

We must be fully committed, but we must also be aware at the same time that we might possibly be wrong. People who claim to be absolutely convinced that their stand is the only right one...is a dead giveaway of unconscious doubt. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.

We must always base our commitment in the center of our own being, or else no commitment will be ultimately authentic.

Concentration is inspiration. You must be completely overtaken by your work and your subject. Only then do all your influences and experience come up to the surface.

[Pleasure is what suggested] which behaviors, emotions, social patterns and patterns of taste served us well during our evolutionary history. They were experienced as pleasures and encoded into our formative genetic codes . . . deep in the past, from about 100,000 years ago and beyond.

If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.

I change myself, I change the world.

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future.

Many of us worry about the situation of the world . . . We need to remain calm, to see clearly. Meditation is a means to be aware, and to try to help.

Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and clearer future.

I avoid grandiose plans. I start with a small piece that I can do. I go to the root of the problem and then work around it. It's building brick by brick.

Nearly everybody is looking for something brave to do. I don't know why people shouldn't write poetry. That's brave.

Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.

Talk and write in a way that encourages the mutual exchange of ideas and acts like a midwife to people birthing their own ideas.

All big things are made up of trifles. My entire life has been built on trifles.

Compassion has nothing to do with achievement at all. It is spacious and very generous. When a person develops real compassion, he is uncertain whether he is being generous to others or to himself because compassion is enviromental generosity, without direction, without " for me" and without " for them". It is filled with joy, spontaneously existing joy, constant joy in the sense of trust, in the sense that joy contains tremendous wealth, richness.

Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.

Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield; Learn from the beasts the physic of the field; The arts of building from the bee receive; Learn of the mole to plow, the worm to weave.

You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself.

Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.

One should pay attention to even the smallest crawling creature for these too may have a valuable lesson to teach us.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.

The breakage and agony rending us today will be our salvation if they drive us by new routes to meet it. No one can proxy for us a masterpiece of loving or experience for us the rapture of art or launch for us book ships freighted with sweet bread to strengthen man. As of old we must be our own seers, musicians and explorers, and to an extent vaster than ever before.

The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.

It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.

Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.

Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring this about?

My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it's full complement of species, returning throughout the world.

We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis.

Adopting a central organizing principle means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, to halt the destruction of the environment.

All art speaks in signs and symbols. No one can explain how it happens that the artist can waken to life in us the existence that he has seen and lives through. No artistic speech is the adequate expression of what it represents; its vital force comes from what is unspoken in it.

We are close to a time when all of humankind will envision a global agenda that encompasses a kind of Global Marshall Plan to address the causes of poverty and suffering and environmental destruction all over the earth.

Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things.

Every good movement passes through five stages, indifference, ridicule, abuse, repression, and respect.

Where words fail, music speaks.