The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Environmental destruction19 quotes
Man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords. — George Perkins Marsh · 1864We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do. — Barbara Wand · 1972By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property...the landscape is deformed. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. — Edward Abbey · 1984We have met the enemy and he is us. — Walt Kelly · 1970What have they done to the earth, yeah?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn,
And tied her with fences and dragged her down.
I hear a very gentle sound,
With your ear down to the ground
We want the world and we want it
We want the world and we want it
Now. — The Doors · 1967All 19 quotes →Man and nature5 quotes
Man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords. — George Perkins Marsh · 1864We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do. — Barbara Wand · 1972We have met the enemy and he is us. — Walt Kelly · 1970All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all. — Thomas Pynchon · 1973We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. — Aldo Leopold · 1949Capitalism3 quotes
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. — Edward Abbey · 1984There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed. — Frank Buchman · 1938All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all. — Thomas Pynchon · 1973Nature3 quotes
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wilderness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. — Gerard Manley Hopkins · 1918Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory and a sterner sense of justice than we do. — Wendell Berry · 1995Mother Nature always bats last and she always bats 1000. — Rob Watson · 2010America1 quote
North American civilization is one of the ugliest to have emerged in human history, and it has engulfed the world. Asphalt and exhaust fumes clog the villages... This great, though disastrous, culture can only change as we begin to stand off and see... The inveterate materialism which has become the model for cultures around the globe. — Arthur Charles Erickson · 1973Conservation1 quote
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. — Aldo Leopold · 1949Consumerism1 quote
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. — Edward Abbey · 1984Economic growth1 quote
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. — Edward Abbey · 1984Environmental protection1 quote
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 · 1907Fighting for justice1 quote
What have they done to the earth, yeah?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn,
And tied her with fences and dragged her down.
I hear a very gentle sound,
With your ear down to the ground
We want the world and we want it
We want the world and we want it
Now. — The Doors · 1967Materialism1 quote
North American civilization is one of the ugliest to have emerged in human history, and it has engulfed the world. Asphalt and exhaust fumes clog the villages... This great, though disastrous, culture can only change as we begin to stand off and see... The inveterate materialism which has become the model for cultures around the globe. — Arthur Charles Erickson · 1973Natural resources1 quote
There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed. — Frank Buchman · 1938Property rights1 quote
By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property...the landscape is deformed. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854Wilderness1 quote
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wilderness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. — Gerard Manley Hopkins · 1918