Humanity is on the march, earth itself is left behind. – David Ehrenfeld, The Arrogance of Humanism, 1978
The American reading his Sunday paper in a state of lazy collapse is perhaps the most perfect symbol of the triumph of quantity over quality…. Whole forests are being ground into pulp daily to minister to our triviality. – Irving Babbitt
Nature always strikes back. It takes all the running we can do to remain in the same place. – Rene Dubos, Medical Utopias, 1961
In its broadest ecological context, economic development is the development of more intensive ways of exploiting the natural environment. – Richard Wilkinson
We have met the enemy and he is us. – Walt Kelly, Pogo, April 1970
Ironically, rural America has become viewed by a growing number of Americans as having a higher [quality of life] not because of what it has, but rather because of what it does not have! – Don A. Dillman, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
We have been god-like in the planned breeding of our domesticated plants, but rabbit-like in the unplanned breeding of ourselves. – Arnold Toynbee
Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back. – Rene Dubos, Mirage of Health, 1959
Time and space – time to be alone, space to move about – these may well become the great scarcities of tomorrow. – Edwin Way Teale, Autumn Across America, 1956
Waste is a tax on the whole people. – Albert W. Atwood
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
The rose has thorns only for those who would gather it. – Chinese Proverb
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. – Albert Einstein
If the climate can change, then so can you. – @thedeadauthor
The command “Be fruitful and multiply” was promulgated, according to our authorities, when the population of the world consisted of two people. – William Ralph Inge, More Lay Thoughts of a Dean, 1931
For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death. – Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962
If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos. – Edward O. Wilson
Malthus has been buried many times, and Malthusian scarcity with him. But as Garrett Hardin remarked, anyone who has to be reburied so often cannot be entirely dead. – Herman E. Daly, Steady-State Economics, 1977
Somebody told me it was frightening how much topsoil we are losing each year, but when I told that story around the campfire, nobody got scared. – Jack Handey
The human race will be the cancer of the planet. – Julian Huxley, attributed
