Ecology Quotes

“I’m lying on the ground looking up at the branches of an oak tree. Dappled light is shining through the canopy, the leaves whisper ancient incantations. This tree, in its living stage, rooted in sights and sounds that I’ll never know, has witnessed extinctions and wars, loves and losses. I wish we could translate the language of trees – hear their voices, know their stories. They host such an astonishing amount of life – there are thousands of species harbouring in and on and under this mighty giant. And I believe trees are like us, or they inspire the better parts of human nature. If only we could be connected in the way this oak tree is connected with its ecosystem.”
― Dara McAnulty, Diary of a Young Naturalist

“What sort of cultivation, or civilization and improvement, is ours to boast of, if it turns out that, as in this instance, unhandselled nature is worth more even by our modes of valuation than our improvements are,—if we leave the land poorer than we found it?”
― Henry David Thoreau, The Journal, 1837-1861

“The more numerous we become, the more crowded, the more interconnected, the more demanding of resources, the more invasive of wild places, the more disruptive of richly diverse ecosystems—the closer we stand to the epidemic threshold for any new virus that probes us as a possible route to greater evolutionary success.”
― David Quammen, Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus

“In the dream,
the fields are green again,
the river is unnamed and runs like rivers
run, connecting with another artery of water, running into
the shore of another village.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“The real jewel of my disease-ridden woodlot is the prothonotary warbler. He nests in an old woodpecker hole, or other small cavity, in a dead snag overhanging water. The flash of his gold-and-blue plumage amid the dank decay of the June woods is in itself proof that dead trees are transmuted into living animals, and vice versa. When you doubt the wisdom of this arrangement, take a look at the prothonotary.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

“Nothing scares neoliberals more than radical science allied with social movements, but until such a union arises, they have little to fear.”
― Troy Vettese, Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics

“Solid unbroken forest is all around me, stretching far beyond my vision, for hundreds of miles. It is one of the few such forests remaining in the world. The forest regulates the water flow from the frequent heavy rains. It prevents floods, providing steady runoff in to the trout-filled streams. It used to support salmon runs. Such a forest is also the diffuse lung tissue of the earth to which we are irrevocably bound. It is not our “environment.” It is us.”
― Bernd Heinrich, The Trees in My Forest

“L’essentiel est que ces contradictions entre mes principes et mes pratiques ne sont plus quotidiennes. Elles sont devenues des exceptions.”
― Hugo Clément, Comment j'ai arrêté de manger les animaux

“Permaculture stems from a triad of ecological ethics: First, care for the earth, because the earth sustains our lives. Second, care for the people, because we are people, and because people are the primary cause of damage to the earth. Third, recycle all resources toward the first two ethics, because surplus means pollution and renewal means survival. By allowing these three primary ethics to provide a foundation for our garden, design, and community work, we can move toward our goals of a peaceful culture and a healthy human ecology.”
― Heather Flores, Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community

“Uma reorganização de conjunto do modo de produção e de consumo é necessária, fundada em critérios exteriores ao mercado capitalista: as necessidades reais da população (não necessariamente "pagáveis") e a preservação do meio ambiente. Em outras palavras, uma economia de transição para o socialismo, "re-inserida" (como diria Karl Polanyi) no meio ambiente social e natural, porque fundada na escolha democrática das prioridades e dos investimentos pela própria população - e não pelas "leis do mercado" ou por um politburo onisciente. Em outras palavras, um planejamento democrático local, nacional, e, cedo ou tarde, internacional, que defina: 1) quais produtos deverão ser subvencionados ou até mesmo distribuídos gratuitamente; 2) quais opções energéticas deverão ser seguidas, ainda que não sejam, num primeiro momento, as mais "rentáveis"; 3) como reorganizar o sistema de transportes, em função de critérios sociais e ecológicos; 4) quais medidas tomar para reparar, o mais rápido possível, os gigantescos estragos do meio ambiente deixados "como herança" pelo capitalismo. E assim sucessivamente... Essa transição levaria não apenas a um novo modo de produção e a uma sociedade igualitária e democrática, mas também a um modo de vida alternativo, a uma civilização nova, ecossocialista, para além do reino do dinheiro, dos hábitos de consumo artificialmente induzidos pela publicidade, e da produção ao infinito de mercadorias nocivas ao meio ambiente.”
― Michael Löwy, O que é ecossocialismo?

“When in doubt, refer to your principles.”
― Arwinder Kaur

“The Ecology Frame focuses on achieving your goals in a way that benefits everybody. It involves acting morally and setting up scenarios where everybody wins.”
― Josh King Madrid

“Greening in the epoch of biodiversity dwindle is a vestigial ritual.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“The political story cannot stand, survive, or be meaningful without the ecological story. Exodus is epistemologically and materially grounded in the earth, for survival and flourishing. But the exodus earth is more than a sire or stage of political liberation; the earth is a participant and subject to the story.”
― Kenneth N Ngwa, Let My People Live: An African Reading of Exodus

“Against exploitation of human and nonhuman life, the Exodus story’s earthly and earthy focus—the rootedness of home in the earth—signifies that political liberation without ecological liberation is not only insufficient but also deficient and ultimately unacceptable.”
― Kenneth N Ngwa, Let My People Live: An African Reading of Exodus

“The main "stream" is dammed, languid, polluted, and unchanging.”
― Lone Wolf Circles

“Терміни "екологія" та "економіка" мають одне етимологічне коріння. Їхній спільний префікс "еко" походить від грецького слова oikos - "дім" або "житло". На жаль, ми егоїстично звузили застосування цього слова лише до себе самих, начебто ми - єдині мешканці цього світу. Однак очевидно, що жодна економічна система - хоч би якою технологічно та соціально розвиненою вона не була - не здатна пережити загибель екосистеми, на якій вона тримається. Ця планета справді є нашим домом; але вона є домом і для всіх людей, усіх тварин й усіх форм життя, створених Богом. Вважати, наче в цьому світі мешкаємо лише ми, люди, - це вияв надзвичайної зарозумілості. І тим більшою зарозумілістю є уявлення, буцімто ця планета належить лише нашому поколінню.
Отже, екологія є "логосом" чи вивченням цього світу, нашого спільного дому, а економіка є "номосом", тобто законом чи врядуванням, "домоврядуванням" у цьому світі як нашому домі. Від того, як ми розуміємо творіння, залежить також наше поводження з довкіллям. Чи будемо ми й надалі використовувати його настільки недбало й нерозумно? Або почнемо ставитись до нього як до нашого дому, дому всього людства й усіх живих істот? Чи згадаємо ми із псалмоспівцем, що "все, що дихає, Господа хвалить" (Пс. 150:6)?”
― Bartholomew I of Constantinople, Encountering the Mystery: Understanding Orthodox Christianity Today

“Perhaps to them and their peers their ecological consciousness is a bigger sign of prestige than a fur coat. Perhaps they feel on more equal terms with the world. I admit I saw the future in them. But they were aggressive and I didn't like it, in spite of their concern for animals. On the other hand, perhaps they are too young to understand that human beings are an endangered species and that they too have a right to protection - particularly in some parts of the world. I hope they learn this soon.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

“Proponents of the default assumptions of Western thinking will make the unsurprising claim that this is anthropomorphizing, pro- jecting human characteristics on non-humans. Such an unfortunate coincidence that we have no term for the inverse flaw, assuming that only humans possess what are actually widespread traits. In recent decades, biologists have rediscovered what others never forgot: that other living beings think, feel, learn, play, and can be sad or happy. Ritual, culture, intergenerational learning, and mourning are also being documented in a growing body of research”
― Peter Gelderloss

“Proponents of the default assumptions of Western thinking will make the unsurprising claim that this is anthropomorphizing, projecting human characteristics on non-humans. Such an unfortunate coincidence that we have no term for the inverse flaw, assuming that only humans possess what are actually widespread traits. In recent decades, biologists have rediscovered what others never forgot: that other living beings think, feel, learn, play, and can be sad or happy. Ritual, culture, intergenerational learning, and mourning are also being documented in a growing body of research”
― Peter Gelderloss

“No living organism can exist isolated from the biotic and abiotic factors that surround it, and its evolutionary success or failure is governed by the extent to which it responds to these factors.”
― John E Hill

“We are drowning in garbage. That's how we come to the fore.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, Yet Another New Land

“And that’s the complicated thing about disturbance. It’s a natural part of an ecosystem. It compels life, it changes life, it makes life dynamic. It makes an ecosystem what it is, and it makes us who we are too. But it can be dangerous: give an ecosystem, or a person, too much disturbance, and it can drive them past their point of no return.”
― Christie Nieman, As Stars Fall

“We stick to the stones, stepping from one to the other, as does everyone else drawn along this thread of stone through the boglands. Isn't this the way humanity should approach everything we do on this precious planet? Keeping ourselves to a narrow corridor of use, treading on this one earth lightly and with care.”
― Raynor Winn, Landlines

“May it fill your heart with joy to extend your family to include every insect, native plant or animal and fluffy bird that finds sanctuary there with you.”
― Mary Reynolds

“The study of ecology and past ecological changes are exciting endeavour, the key to unearth the natural and human impacts on ecosytems dynamics”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“I love that our sudden access to the entire history of human knowledge has afforded us the information we need to self-diagnose our heretofore ignored mental health; among so many other things hidden from us.
We also see history laid bare before us, sans embellishing by the brutal and subhuman “victors” of bloody invasions that wrongly usurped land and resources that would have been voluntarily shared, had they any sort of backbone or ounce of morality at ALL.
Now we suffer and toil on said stolen land at useless busy work, slave labor jobs that only exist to build wealth for shareholders and further poison the land they claim as their own while draining the remaining “good years” from us like opening a vein.
Reject the system, and escape the grid, the more of us that exit the machine the faster it rusts and grinds to its inevitable halt… and the earth and all its inhabitants can finally heal.”
― Bryan (Nyrhalahotep) Hardbarger

“It is a real privilege to be so close to wild creatures of all sorts: birds, possums, skunks, and even bears. In that closeness, I see the fabulous gifts each creature brings, and how accurate the Native Americans have been in seeing each species and individual creature as a discrete source of wisdom.

Somehow that recognition is fading in our current world; it must not disappear. Those of us who recognize the value of the interconnected web of life must do what we can to support and protect that life process.”
― Kathleen Knight, Sanctuary - Exploring the Magical World of Birds

“Time listens patiently to the drones and demands of destiny’s desire”
― Leo Lourdes, A World of Yoga: 700 Asanas for Mindfulness and Well-Being

“Yoga is revolutionary as it can change the way we treat the world and the life force within it”
― Leo Lourdes, A World of Yoga: 700 Asanas for Mindfulness and Well-Being