Ecological Consciousness Quotes

“He who sees a gold bullion more valuable than a tree has surely an intelligence much less than a donkey’s!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“If the long arc of history bends toward social justice, it also bends toward environmental justice and ecological sanity.”
― David Jaber

“The ecological crisis is only an externalizationf an inner malaise and cannot be solved without a spiritual rebirth of Western man […] It is still our hope that as the crisis created by man's forgetfulness of who he really is grows and that as the idols of his own making crumble one by one before his eyes, he will begin a true reform of himself, which always means a spiritual rebirtn and throughis rebirth attain a new harmony with the world of nature around him. Otherwise, it is hopeless to expect to live in harmony with that grand theophany which is virgin nature, while remaining oblivious and indifferent to the Source of that theophany both beyond nature and at the centre of man's being. (p. 9)”
― Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man

“Viva fui in silvis sum dura occisa securi dum vixi tacui mortua dulce cano” is inscribed on the fingerboard of a 16th-century viola da gamba made by Kaspar Tieffenbrucker. It translates, “I was alive in the woods; I was cut down by the cruel axe. While I lived I was silent; In death I sweetly sing.”
― Anonymous

“The environment is not an "other" to us. It is not a collection of things that we encounter. Rather, it is part of our being. It is the locus of our existence and identity. We cannot and do not exist apart from it. It is through empathic projection that we come to know our environment, understand how we are part of it and how it is part of us. This is the bodily mechanism by which we can participate in nature, not just as hikers or climbers or swimmers, but as part of nature itself, part of a larger, all-encompassing whole. A mindful embodied spirituality is thus an ecological spirituality.

An embodied spirituality requires an aesthetic attitude to the world that is central to self-nurturance, to the nurturance of others, and to the nurturance of the world itself. Embodied spirituality requires an understanding that nature is not inanimate and less than human, but animated and more than human. It requires pleasure, joy in the bodily connection with earth and air, sea and sky, plants and animals - and the recognition that they are all more than human, more than any human beings could ever achieve. Embodied spirituality is more than spiritual experience. It is an ethical relationship to the physical world.”
― George Lakoff, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought

“Inscribed on the fingerboard of a viola da gamba by Kaspar Tieffenbrucker: "Viva fui in silvis sum dura occisa securi dum vixi tacui mortua dulce cano." (I was alive in the woods; I was cut down by the cruel axe. While I lived I was silent; In death I sweetly sing.)”
― Anonymous

“Who is speaking for the waters of the Earth?”
― Gregory Cajete, Look To The Mountain: An Ecology Of Indigenous Education

“The exhaustion and pollution of earth's resource is, above all, the result of man's self-image, of a regression in his consciousness. Some would like to speak about a mutation of collective consciousness which leads to a conception of a man as an organism dependent not on nature and individuals, but rather on institutions. This institutionalization of substantive values, this belief that a planned process of treatment ultimately gives results desired by the recipient, this consumer ethos, is at the heart of the Promethean fallacy.
Efforts to find a new balance in the global milieu depend on the deinstitutionalization of values.”
― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

“In the context of forever, we have all the time in the world.”
― Leo Lourdes

“Secretary Gu said that if we left the mountains with our reindeer, it would also be a way of protecting the forest. Roaming reindeer damaged the vegetation and disturbed the balance of the ecosystem. And anyway, wild animals are protected now so hunting is prohibited.
Only a people that is willing to lay down it's hunting rifles, he added, is a truly civilised people with a promising future.

I really wanted to tell him that our reindeer have always kissed the forest. Compared to the loggers who number in the tens of thousands, we and our animals are just a handful of dragonflies skimming the water's surface. If the river that is this forest has been polluted, how could it be due to the passage of a few dragonflies?

But I didn't say any of that to him.”
― Chi Zijian

“Des del punt de vista de la Natura, no hi ha drama. En una batalla oberta de l'ésser humà contra la Natura salvatge, aquesta darrera guanyarà. La vida sempre s'obre camí davant totes les adversitats. No estem davant la fi de la vida. Estem davant la perillosa fi del món que coneixem i al qual ens hem adaptat al llarg de les últimes desenes de milers d'anys.”
― Alex Nogués, Severn Cullis-Suzuki: Feu que les vostres accions reflecteixin les vostres paraules

“Ko sem tistega aprila sklonila glavo in prosila za dež, sem razumela, da kmetijstvo danes zahteva radikalno odločitev za popolno priredje. Kmetijstvo danes je vzpostavljanje zavesti, da med nadzorom in sodelovanjem zmeraj izbereš sodelovanje, kajti nadzor je utvara, ki ubija. Nič ne more nadzorovati narave. Nič izničiti njenih skrivnosti.”
― Nataša Kramberger, Po vsej sili živ