To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed. – Theodore Roosevelt, seventh annual message, 3 December 1907

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. – Native American Proverb

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

They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers. – James G. Watt, quoted in Newsweek, 8 March 1982