Ecological quotes:

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Our personal consumer choices have ecological, social, and spiritual consequences. It is time to re-examine some of our deeply held notions that underlie our lifestyles. -- David Suzuki
The hierarchy of relations, from the molecular structure of carbon to the equilibrium of the species and ecological whole, will perhaps be the leading idea of the future. -- Joseph Needham
Finally, the ecological health of the Mississippi River and its economic importance to the many people that make their living or seek their recreation is based on a healthy river system. -- Ron Kind
We need what I have often called an ecological approach to the management of these resources and we do not have that now. We have the inertia of past habits, unsustainable habits. -- Maurice Strong
Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce; it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies. -- Garrett Hardin
The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence. -- Freeman Dyson
Ecological differentiation is the necessary condition for coexistence. -- Garrett Hardin
Ecological devastation is the excrement, so to speak, of man's power worship. -- Ernest Becker
I think buildings should imitate ecological systems. Ecological systems in nature before we had human beings interfere with them exist in a state of stasis - they are self-supporting, self-sustaining. -- Ken Yeang
Ecological sensitivity' is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump. He doesn't even believe in global warming. But this is because he is a city boy. -- Alex Shoumatoff
'Ecological sensitivity' is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump. He doesn't even believe in global warming. But this is because he is a city boy. -- Alex Shoumatoff
The marketplace is an institution that teaches self-advancement, private acquisition, and the domination of nature. Its way of thinking is incompatible with the round river. Ecological harmony is a nonmarket value that takes a collective will to achieve. -- Donald Worster
It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life. -- Rene Dubos
The moment the angel enters a life it enters an environment. We are ecological from day one. -- James Hillman
Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle. -- Pope John Paul II
I think that witnessing ecological problems visible from space is one of the new and essential roles of astronauts -- Philippe Perrin
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The ecological crisis is doing what no other crisis in history has ever done - challenging us to a realization of a new humanity. -- Jean Houston
Every time we consume meat, eggs or dairy foods, we contribute to ecological devastation and the wasteful misuse of resources on a global scale. -- Ingrid Newkirk
Wars don't happen on battlefields; they go on happening in people's hearts for generations and generations, and the ecological damage is unfathomably complex and dire. -- Michael Leunig
[My vision is] To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone. -- R. Buckminster Fuller
We're finally going to get the bill for the Industrial Age. If the projections are right, it's going to be a big one: the ecological collapse of the planet. -- Jeremy Rifkin
We can pay the ecological debt by changing economic models, and by giving up luxury consumption, setting aside selfishness and individualism, and thinking about the people and the planet Earth. -- Evo Morales
We have to shift our emphasis from economic efficiency and materialism towards a sustainable quality of life and to healing of our society, of our people and our ecological systems. -- Janet Holmes a Court
By obtaining a sense of its place in the unfolding drama of life, set in an ecological theatre, so we can understand why it has become one of the leading players. -- Simon Conway Morris
If politics and business fail us, of course the military will be called in. In the developing world, the massive and repeated ecological disasters are quite commonly met by the military. -- Bruce Sterling
We need the humbleness and clarity to see that our food, while benefitting from technological advances, has benefitted even more from free ecological resources: Cheap energy, lots of water everywhere, and a stable climate. -- Dan Barber
We are a profoundly interconnected species, as the global economic and ecological crises reveal in vivid and frightening detail. We must embrace the simple fact that we are dependent on and accountable to one another. -- Parker Palmer
Life and families and babies are all joyous gifts. But if we do not begin to truly account for our numbers, we will surely create an ecological crisis that will only lead to anguish and despair. -- Jason Alexander
There have been low moments before, but Christianity is an incredibly adaptable organism, using different parts of its repertoire to mutate into new ecological niches, yet preserving intact its story of grace, of love improbably triumphant. -- Francis Spufford
I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit. -- Edmund White
I also assume that they are not simply the physical properties of things as now conceived by physical science. Instead, they are ecological, in the sense that they are properties of the environment relative to an animal. -- James J. Gibson
A hostility to modernity is shared by ideologies that have nothing else in common - a nostalgia for moral clarity, small-town intimacy, family values, primitive communism, ecological sustainability, communitarian solidarity, or harmonies with the rhythms of nature. -- Steven Pinker
I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit -- Edmund White
A hunk of beef raised on Scottish moorland has a very different ecological footprint from one created in an intensive feedlot using concentrated cereal feed, and a wild venison or rabbit casserole is arguably greener than a vegetable curry. -- Tristram Stuart
The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. The ecological balance cannot be re-established unless we recognize again that only persons have ends and only persons can work towards them. -- Ivan Illich
If you look at the ecological circuitry of this planet, the ways in which materials like carbon or sulfur or phosphorous or nitrogen get cycled in ways that makes them available for our biology, the organisms that do the heavy lifting are bacteria. -- Andrew H. Knoll
I'm first and foremost a biological explorer. I've looked all over the world for answers. Secondly, I'm an ecological designer, and by that I mean I attempt to work with constellations of nature to create technological forms. So I'm part engineer, part ecologist, part inventor, really. -- John Todd
Sustainability is a seemingly laudable goal - it tells us we need to live within our means, whether economic, ecological, or political - but it's insufficient for uncertain times. How can we live within our means when those very means can change, swiftly and unexpectedly, beneath us? -- Jamais Cascio
The industrial processes in use today were developed at a time when no one had to consider what the environmental impact was. Who cared? But making ecological concerns matter to a company's bottom line will help it do the research and development that will reinvent everything we buy. -- Daniel Goleman
We're shaking loose viruses and dislodging them from their natural ecological limitations, places where they aren't very abundant and have competition, even within a single animal. We introduce them into a new, rich habitat called the human population, where they can flourish more abundantly and cause more trouble. -- David Quammen
Some global hazards are insidious. They stem from pressure on energy supplies, food, water and other natural resources. And they will be aggravated as the population rises to a projected nine billion by mid-century, and by the effects of climate change. An 'ecological shock' could irreversibly degrade our environment. -- Martin Rees
Well I think on a simple ecological level that the diversity of this planet is important for our survival, that all of our different cultures, people are important to the health of the whole the same way that a species of animal should be saved and at a simple ecology level. -- Richard Gere
The ecological impact of book manufacture and traditional book marketing - I think that should really be considered. We have this industry in which we cut down trees to make the paper that we then use enormous amounts of electricity to turn into books that weigh a great deal and are then shipped enormous distances to point-of-sale retail. -- William Gibson
Ecology's implications for capitalism are too momentous for the capitalist to contemplate. The plutocrats are more wedded to their wealth than to the Earth upon which they live, more concerned with the fate of their fortunes than with the fate of humanity. The present ecological crisis has been created by the few at the expense of the many. -- Michael Parenti
Man will survive as a species for one reason: He can adapt to the destructive effects of our power-intoxicated technology and of our ungoverned population growth, to the dirt, pollution and noise of a New York or Tokyo. And that is the tragedy. It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life. -- Rene Dubos
Look at what realists have done for us. They have led us to war and climate change, poverty on an unimaginable scale, and wholesale ecological destruction. Half of humanity goes to bed hungry because of all the realistic leaders in the world. I tell people who call me 'unrealistic' to show me what their realism has done. Realism is an outdated, overplayed and wholly exaggerated concept. -- Satish Kumar
If you ask me, the place that a story happens is as equal character. It's almost like an ecological viewpoint: These people are living in this piece of land, and in this piece of land in this time this is possible. For me, I almost think location first. It's time first - what year is it - then where are we, and then who is in it. -- Mike Mills
Is it too late to prevent us from self-destructing? No, for we have the capacity to design our own future, to take a lesson from living things around us and bring our values and actions in line with ecological necessity. But we must first realize that ecological and social and economic issues are all deeply intertwined. There can be no solution to one without a solution to the others. -- Jean-Michel Cousteau
Birds are an ecological litmus paper. -- Roger Tory Peterson
The ecological crisis is a moral issue. -- Pope John Paul II
To be economical agriculture must be ecological. -- Charles Walters
I think buildings should imitate ecological systems. -- Ken Yeang
The abuse of the Earth is the ecological crisis. -- Vandana Shiva
The shortage of fresh water is the major ecological problem of this moment. -- Mikhail Gorbachev
An ecological approach to the economy is about having enough, not having more. -- John Bellamy Foster
Ecology and spirituality are fundamentally connected, because deep ecological awareness, ultimately, is spiritual awareness. -- Fritjof Capra
Subversive, ethical, ecological, political, humorous ... this is how I see my duty as a designer. -- Philippe Starck
We can only predict the future ecological changes, by emergence of the past into the present. -- Lailah Gifty Akita
I often plagiarize from myself. I like to think of this as ecological journalism: I recycle. -- Molly Ivins
In the global marketplace of the future the price of every product will tell the ecological truth. -- Kalle Lasn
We think there is an ecological problem, but the real problem is irresponsible growth of human population. -- Jaggi Vasudev
The origin of agriculture involved both human intentionality and a set of underlying ecological and evolutionary principles. -- Kent V. Flannery
Trees are right at the heart of all the necessary debates: ecological, social, economic, political, moral, religious. -- Colin Tudge
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. -- Aldo Leopold
Technology cannot be an end in itself but must aim at solving long term social and ecological problems. -- Richard Rogers
Success comes because you have found your ecological niche and can flourish by doing your own valuable thing. -- Ted Malloch
Catch-and-release fishing is an ecological necessity, not my preference. The practice smacks of bad faith, an inauthentic act. -- Christopher Camuto
In its broadest ecological context, economic development is the development of more intensive ways of exploiting the natural environment. -- Richard G. Wilkinson
Socialism failed because it couldn't tell the economic truth. Capitalism may fail because it couldn't tell the ecological truth. -- Lester R. Brown
The Industrial Age is not sustainable. It's not sustainable in ecological terms, and it's not sustainable in human terms. -- Peter Senge
An anarchist society, far from being a remote ideal, has become a precondition for the practice of ecological principles. -- Murray Bookchin
I think that witnessing ecological problems visible from space is one of the new and essential roles of astronauts. -- Philippe Perrin
Population control is not an issue involving contraceptives for third world women. It is an issue of ecological justice. -- Vandana Shiva
Simplicity means to choose ways of living that touch the Earth more lightly and that reduce our ecological footprint. -- Duane Elgin
Humanity is living off its ecological credit card and can only do this by liquidating the planet's natural resources -- Mathis Wackernagel
Modern Society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyles -- Pope John Paul II
The Industrial Age is not sustainable. Its not sustainable in ecological terms, and its not sustainable in human terms. -- Peter Senge
The ecological principle in agriculture is to connect the genius of the place, to fit the farming to the farm. -- Wendell Berry
The new markets that arise from ecological constraints will dominate the 21st century economy, and so will markets for knowledge. -- Graciela Chichilnisky
A token of ecological awareness in a society devoted to self destruction and waste but unwilling to acknowledge its indulgent ways. -- Dan Simmons
It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the Earth can sustain. -- Barbara Ehrenreich
We study the past ecological history, with the conscience of the present ecological conditions. The key to predict future aquatic ecosystem changes. -- Lailah Gifty Akita
I'm sixty-two, and it's ecological sense to die while you're still productive, die and clear a space for others, old and young. -- Harold Brodkey
The ecological principle of unity in diversity grades into a richly mediated social principle; hence my use of the term social ecology. -- Murray Bookchin
In Tasmania, an island the size of Ireland whose primeval forests astonished 19th-century Europeans, an incomprehensible ecological tragedy is being played out. -- Richard Flanagan
Some of the technologies that were created during the Industrial Revolution were appalling, such as capitalization, investment, social hierarchy, sexism, racism, and ecological destruction. -- Chellis Glendinning
In reality, we haven't escaped the gravity of life at all. We are still beholden to ecological laws, the same as any other life-form. -- Janine Benyus
Both individual fulfillment and the ecological balance of life on this planet are best served by dying when our inherent biology decrees that we do. -- Sherwin B. Nuland
caring is not abstract. The circle of ecological compassion we feel is enlarged by direct experience of the living world, and shrunken by its lack. -- Robin Wall Kimmerer
All Christians need an 'ecological conversion', whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them. -- Pope Francis
The real survivors are the Earth inhabitants that have lived millions of years without consuming their ecological capital, the base from which all abundance flows. -- Janine Benyus
We study the past ecological history, with the conscience of the present ecological conditions, the only window to predict the future environmental and climate changes. -- Lailah Gifty Akita
Eventually the world will no longer be divided by the ideologies of 'left' and 'right' but by those who accept ecological limits and those who don't. -- Wolfgang Sachs
The only real form of pollution is people. Any ecological system which does not include the reduction or stopping of growth of the population is eyewash -- Heinz Wolff
I have hope that humanity will be cured of our collective ecological insanity and that we adapt to living within the boundaries of the laws of ecology. -- Paul Watson
The ecological movement is concerned about this, and this is in here, where everything is public. In Iran, where everything is covert, we have no firsthand information. -- Akbar Ganji
The hierarchy of relations, from the molecular structure of carbon to the equilibrium of the species and ecological whole, will perhaps be the leading idea of the future." -- Joseph Needham
Food consists not just in piles of chemicals; it also comprises a set of social and ecological relationships, reaching back to the land and outward to other people. -- Michael Pollan
More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecological crises until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one. -- Lynn Townsend White, Jr.
Humans are now the most numerous mammal on the planet. There are more humans than rats or mice. Humans have a huge ecological footprint, magnified by their technology. -- David Suzuki
That inefficiency is masked because growth and progress are measured in money, and money does not give us information about ecological systems, it only gives information about financial systems. -- Paul Hawken
We study the past history, with the conscience of the present environmental changes; we can only predict the future ecological changes, by emergence of the past into the present. -- Lailah Gifty Akita
That is the wonderful ecological mind that Gregory Bateson talks about - the patterns that connect, the stories that inform and inspire us and teach us what is possible -- Terry Tempest Williams
Ecofeminism is a good term for distinguishing a feminism that is ecological from the kind of feminisms that have become extremely technocratic. I would even call them very patriarchal. -- Vandana Shiva
Most of them are doomed to rapid extinction, but a few may make evolutionary inventions, such as physiological, ecological, or behavioral innovations that give these species improved competitive potential. -- Ernst Mayr
The most profound and serious indication of the moral implications underlying the ecological problem is the lack of respect for life evident in many of the patterns of environmental pollution. -- Pope John Paul II
The reason why there is more pessimism about technology in Europe has to do with history, the use of databases to keep track of people in the camps, ecological disasters. -- Evgeny Morozov
I've moved away from that sort of deep-ecological extremism. I started to think: what can we do for wild birds right now? I don't want these particular species to disappear. -- Jonathan Franzen
The roots of our ecological crises are axiomatic: they lie in our belief and value structures which shape our relationship with nature, with each other and the lifestyles we lead. -- Ziauddin Sardar
The seriousness of ecological degradation lays bare the depth of man's moral crisis... Simplicity, moderation, and discipline as well as the spirit of sacrifice must become a part of everyday life. -- Pope John Paul II
Throughout the world today there is a gowing awareness of the failings of the Western model of development and a corresponding desire to look for more human-scale, ecological ways of living. -- Helena Norberg-Hodge
We do not have an ecological crisis. The ecosphere has a human crisis. Our 'story' about our place in the scheme of things has somehow gone awry in the industrial age... -- William E. Rees
Heatstroke is an important and useful addition to the library on climate change, bringing insights from deep-time ecological research to help illuminate the dire forecasts of which we're already so aware. -- David Quammen
By uploading 40 years of 'Ecologist' editions online, we will be creating the world's most extensive ecological archive. 'The Ecologist' will continue to set the environmental and political agenda here and abroad. -- Zac Goldsmith
Birds ... are sensitive indicators of the environment, a sort of "ecological litmus paper," ... The observation and recording of bird populations over time lead inevitably to environmental awareness and can signal impending changes. -- Roger Tory Peterson
It's true that compared with the scene when Unix started, today the ecological niches are fairly full, and fresh new OS ideas are harder to come by, or at least to propagate. -- Dennis Ritchie
It is really important to solve the problem of rational utilization and distribution of wate supplies. I dare say, the shortage of fresh water is the major ecological problem of this moment. -- Mikhail Gorbachev
The whole [scientific] process resembles biological evolution. A problem is like an ecological niche, and a theory is like a gene or a species which is being tested for viability in that niche. -- David Deutsch
We in the industrialized world make a greater difference because our ecological footprint, our impact on the condition of the environment, is 40 to 50 times larger than that of people in the developing world. -- Maurice Strong

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