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NATURE
Nature
does nothing uselessly.
-- Aristotle
(384-322 BC)
*
In all things of nature, there is something of the
marvelous.
-- Aristotle
"The
major problems in the world are the result of the difference
between how nature works and the way people think."
~ Gregory Bateson
*
Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse
to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man?
~ Kenneth
E. Boulding
I
go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have
my senses put in order.
~ John
Burroughs
Nature
teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons
in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone
than a moral.
~ John
Burroughs
"Those
who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves
of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the
migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides,
the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something
infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature
- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring
after the winter." -- Rachel
Carson
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
*
Like
music and art, love of nature is a common language
that can transcend political or social boundaries.
~
Jimmy
Carter
*
Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks
in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more
than what is in books, for they speak with the voice
of God.
~ George
Washington Carver
"Most
of us have become Ecozombies, desensitized, environmental
deadheads. On average, society conditions us to spend
over 95% of our time and 99.9% of our thinking disconnected
from nature. Nature's extreme absence in our lives
leaves us abandoned and wanting. We feel we never
have enough. We greedily, destructively, consume and,
can't stop. Nature's loss in our psyche produces a
hurt, hungering, void within us that bullies us into
our dilemmas."
~ Michael J. Cohen
As we gain satisfaction from artificial substitutes
for nature we forget that there is no known substitute
for Nature, the real thing and its eons of intelligent,
life supportive, experience. Each substitute we create
falls short of nature's balanced perfection, thus
producing our pollution, garbage and relationship
conflicts."
~ Michael J. Cohen
"Everything
is connected to everything else. Everything must go
somewhere. Nature knows best. There is no such thing
as a free lunch. If you don't put something in the
ecology, it's not there."
~ Barry Commoner
What
is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking
through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to
know what's going on.
-- Jacques
Cousteau
The
problems we face today, violent conflicts, destruction
of nature, poverty, hunger and so on, are human-created
problems which can be resolved through human effort,
understanding and the development of a sense of brotherhood
and sisterhood. We need to cultivate a universal responsibility
for one another and the planet we share. --
14th
Dalai Lama
Children
have become disengaged from nature and we need to reintroduce
them to the pleasure that it brings. If we do that they
will care for it. Through the simple act of planting
a tree we can open their eyes to nature's beauty.
-- Dame Judi Dench
*
"The belief that we can manage the Earth and improve
on Nature is probably the ultimate expression of human
conceit, but it has deep roots in the past and is
almost universal."
~ René
Dubos
"The
great ecosystems are like complex tapestries - a million
complicated threads, interwoven, make up the whole picture.
Nature can cope with small rents in the fabric; it can
even, after a time, cope with major disasters like floods,
fires, and earthquakes. What nature cannot cope with
is the steady undermining of its fabric by the activities
of man."
~ Gerald Durrell
“If
we have a hope of really understanding our place in
nature and of carving out a place for ourselves that
is sustainable, it’s primarily because of the new
level of communication. It used to be, ‘What you don’t
have in your mind, you have on your shelf.’ But now
we have the Web.”
~ Sylvia
Earle
A
human being is a part of the whole, called by us,
"Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences
himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated
from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his
consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for
us, restricting us to our personal desires and to
affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task
must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening
our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able
to achieve this completely, but the striving for such
achievement is in itself a part of the liberation
and a foundation for inner security -- Albert
Einstein
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
"To
speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most
persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very
superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye
of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the
child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and
outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other;
who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the
era of manhood."
~ Ralph
Waldo Emerson
"In
the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through
the man, in spite of real sorrows." ~ Ralph
Waldo Emerson
"The
earth will continue to regenerate its life sources only
as long as we and all the peoples of the world do our
part to conserve its natural resources. It is a responsibility
which every human being shares. Through voluntary action,
each of us can join in building a productive land in
harmony with nature."
~ Gerald Ford
Zoos
are becoming facsimiles - or perhaps caricatures -
of how animals once were in their natural habitat.
If the right policies toward nature were pursued,
we would need no zoos at all.
~Michael
J. Fox
Our
connection to nature grounds us, it makes us more spiritually
aware.
We must keep the legacy of nature materially alive for future
generations.
-- Nelly Furtado
"Climate
change is not just another issue. It is the issue
that, unchecked, will swamp all other issues. The
only hope lies in all the countries of the world coming
together around a common global project to rewire
the world with clean energy. This is a path to peace
--- peace among people, and peace between people and
nature."
-- Ross
Gelbspan
"I
just have this absolute belief that humans are moving
away from cruelty and destruction towards a time when
we can truly live in harmony with nature. When we
understand that there is a spiritual power around
us from which we can draw strength. That is where
I believe human destiny ultimately is taking us. I
just hope we have time." ~ Jane
Goodall
*
It's
easy to become hopeless. So people must have hope:
the human brain, the resilience of nature, the energy
of young people and the sort of inspiration that you
see from so many hundreds of people who tackle tasks
that are impossible and never give up and succeed.
~ Jane
Goodall
"We
cannot win this battle to save species and environments
without forging an emotional bond between ourselves
and nature as well - for we will not fight to save what
we do not love."
~ Stephen Jay Gould
Tolerance, a term which we sometimes use in place
of the words respect, mercy, generosity, or forbearance,
is the most essential element of moral systems; it
is a very important source of spiritual discipline
and a celestial virtue of perfected people.
-- M.
Fethullah Gülen
*
Only
a few people seem to realize that social harmony and
peace with nature, between people, and within the
individual only can come about when the material and
spiritual realms are reconciled.
-- M.
Fethullah Gülen
If
they [companies] believe they are in business to serve
people, to help solve problems, to use and employ
the ingenuity of their workers to improve the lives
of people around them by learning from the nature
that gives us life, we have a chance.
~ Paul
Hawken
*
If we think systematically, we will stop asking, "How
much is nature worth?" We will know that we are a
piece of nature ourselves.
~ Karl-Henrik
Robèrt
We
are at the very point in time when a 400-year old
age is dying and another is struggling to be born
- a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions
enormously greater than the world has ever experienced.
Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of individuality,
liberty, community and ethics such as the world has
never know, and a harmony with nature, with one another,
and with the divine intelligence such as the world
has never dreamed.
-- Dee Ward Hock, founder of Visa
*
"Modern man no longer regards Nature as in any
sense divine and feels perfectly free to behave toward
her as an overweening conqueror and tyrant." ~ Aldous
Huxley
*
When
people, land, and community are as one, all three
members prosper; when they relate not as members but
as competing interests, all three are exploited. By
consulting Nature as the source and measure of that
membership, The Land Institute seeks to develop an
agriculture that will save soil from being lost or
poisoned while promoting a community life at once
prosperous and enduring."
-- Wes
Jackson
"For if one link in nature's chain might be lost,
another might be lost, until the whole of things will
vanish by piecemeal."
~ Thomas
Jefferson
*
"We
protect nature not for nature's sake but for our own
sake because it's the infrastructure of our communities..."
~ Robert
Kennedy, Jr.
"It
is wrong to suppose the world was created primarily
to serve mankind's purposes and pleasures. A conviction
about having dominion over land and water and living
things breeds ideas of unwarranted self importance.
It is a sobering thought that man's place in Nature's
scheme is, after all, a small one."
~ J. Grant MacEwan
*
When
one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it
attached to the rest of the world. ~ John
Muir
*
These
temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism,
seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead
of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains,
lift them to the Almighty Dollar.
~ John
Muir
In
every walk with nature one receives far more than
he seeks.
~ John
Muir
*
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
*
"We’ve
poisoned the air, the water, and the land. In our
passion to control nature, things have gone out of
control. Progress from now on has to mean something
different. We’re running out of resources and we are
running out of time." ~ Robert
Redford
"To
secure our environmental legacy for future generations,
we must find ways to reconcile humanity more satisfactorily
with the natural systems upon which all human life and
civilizations depend. We must recognize that the natural
systems of which we are part have an intrinsic worth
transcending narrow utilitarian values. They must be
preserved for their own sake. No philosopher or religious
thinker has been more sensitive to this intimate relationship
between humanity and nature than St. Francis of Assisi.
The powerful contemporary environmental tradition of
preservation, of reverence for wilderness and protection
for all living things - the ideal that sees, as John
Muir said, ‘in God’s wildness... the hope of the world’
- virtually began with St. Francis."
-- William K. Reilly, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency
*
We should be evolving into a new age of business with
a worldview that maintains one simple proposition—that
all of nature: humans, animals, earth, are interconnected
and interdependent.
-- Anita
Roddick
*
We should be evolving into a new age of business with
a worldview that maintains one simple proposition—that
all of nature: humans, animals, earth, are interconnected
and interdependent.
-- Anita
Roddick
The
throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws
out of balance also the lives of men.
~ Franklin
D. Roosevelt
*
Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control
our appetites.
~ William
Ruckelshaus, 1st EPA Administrator
"I
am drawn to the wild not because it is wild but because
it is sensible, logical, ordered, stable, resilient.
Wild nature is everything we're struggling to regain."
~ Carl Safina
*
"Man
talks of a battle with Nature, forgetting that if
he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing
side." ~ E.
F. Schumacher
*
"We
still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only
with our fellow men but also with nature..." ~ E.F.
Schumacher
The
system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to
be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing.
Not so with technology.
~ E.F.
Schumacher
*
"The primary threat to nature and people today comes
from centralising and monopolising power and control.
Not until diversity is made the logic of production
will there be a chance for sustainability, justice
and peace. Cultivating and conserving diversity is
no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative."
~ Vandana
Shiva
*
Uniformity
is not nature's way; diversity is nature's way.
~ Vandana
Shiva
See
how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence;
see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move
in silence... We need silence to be able to touch
souls.
-- Mother
Teresa
It
is the marriage of the soul with Nature that makes
the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination.
-- Henry
David Thoreau
If you
can't be in awe of Mother Nature, there's something wrong
with you.
-- Alex Trebek
*
I would feel more optimistic about a bright future
for man if he spent less time proving that he can
outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness
and respecting her seniority.
~ E.
B. White
Our
approach to nature is to beat it into submission.
We would stand a better change of survival if we accommodated
ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively
instead of skeptically and dictatorially."
~ E.
B. White
We
shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until
we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason
for existence save to serve man.
~ Lynn White, Jr.
After
you have exhausted what there is in business, politics,
conviviality, and so on - have found that none of
these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what
remains? Nature remains.
~ Walt
Whitman
*
Conscious business.. business that is conscious of
inner and outer worlds.. would therefore be business
that takes into account body, mind, and spirit in
self, culture, and nature. Put differently, conscious
business would be mindful of the way that the spectrum
of consciousness operates in the Big Three worlds
of self and culture and nature.
-- Ken
Wilber
I
believe we would be happier to have a personal revolution
in our individual lives and go back to simpler living
and more direct thinking. It is the simple things of
life that make living worthwhile, the sweet fundamental
things such as love and duty, work and rest, and living
close to nature. There are not hothouse blossoms that
can compare in beauty and fragrance with my bouquet
of wildflowers.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder
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