Best 140 quotes in «sustainability quotes» category

Weapons never stay in their boxes. Once a weapon has been manufactured, sooner or later someone will use it. If it were possible to bring about true and lasting peace by force of arms, then we should turn all our factories into weapons factories. But that is impossible. Even though it is difficult to try to bring about peace through inner transformation, it is the only way of establishing sustainable peace in the world.

We are made of star material, and every atom of matter on Earth originated in the core of a star.

We founded this nation under the illusory notion of independence, that a man’s life is entirely distinct from the life of his neighbor; that the poisons in his water have no bearing on the cleanliness of his neighbor’s water; that the suffering of a laborer has no direct relationship to the purchaser of goods; that animals are objects for sale; that the health of the land is divorced from the health of the collective. We’ve turned freedom from tyranny into freedom from each other.

Well, it's been obvious for centuries that capitalism is going to self-destruct: that's just inherent in the logic of system―because to the extent that a system is capitalist, that means maximizing short-term profit and not being concerned with long-term effects. In fact, the motto of capitalism was, "private vices, public benefits"―somehow it's gonna work out. Well, it doesn't work out, and it's never going to work out: if you're maximizing short-term profits without concern for the long-term effects, you are going to destroy the environment, for one thing. I mean, you can pretend up to a certain point that the world has infinite resources and that it's an infinite wastebasket―but at some point you're going to run into the reality, which is that that isn't true. Well, we're running into that reality now―and it's very profound. Take something like combustion: anything you burn, no matter what it is, is increasing the greenhouse effect―and this was known to scientists decades ago, they knew exactly what was happening. But in a capitalist system, you don't care about long-term effects like that, what you have to care about is tomorrow's profits. So the greenhouse effect has been building for years, and there's no known technological fix on the horizon―there may not be any answer to this, it could be so serious that there's no remedy. That's possible, and then human beings will turn out to have been a lethal mutation, which maybe destroys a lot of life with us. Or it could be that there's some way of fixing it, or some ameliorating way―nobody knows.

We need a new ethic of place, one that has room for salmon and skyscrapers, suburbs and wilderness, Mount Rainier and the Space Needle, one grounded in history.

We need more environmental awareness and sustainability, sustainable living and sustainable working, in all fields or areas. We need to create a world of understanding, acceptance, respect, tolerance, compassion and consciousness.

We need to spread more seeds and fill this Planet with love to be surrounded by flowers just everywhere! It starts by simply opening up our hearts and hands to one another. It's in simple things where true Happiness may flourish.

We're experiencing the genesis of a community where it does not matter where your roots lie, but what you believe in. We will continue to create an inclusive and sustainable spirit, spreading the word from coast to mountaintop.

We think about how our food will impact our bodies, but what about how it impacts our planet?

We're reaching the point where the Earth will have to end the burden we've placed on her, if we don't lift the burden ourselves.

What is the point of "labor saving" if by making work effortless we make it poor, and if by doing poor work we weaken our bodies and lose conviviality and health? (Health is Membership, pg. 93)

We will spend billions making inhospitable distant planets habitable. And yet we spend trillions destroying the abundant ingredients for life on our home planet.

We've got to think now, in real terms, for that seventh generation . . . We've got to get back to spiritual law if we are to survive.

When reeling a fish in to not simply feel “the power of wildness intimately but the same time recognize the right of that wildness to continue”.

When a livestock farmer is willing to “practice complexity”—to choreograph the symbiosis of several different animals, each of which has been allowed to behave and eat as it evolved to—he will find he has little need for machinery, fertilizer, and, most strikingly, chemicals. He finds he has no sanitation problem or any of the diseases that result from raising a single animal in a crowded monoculture and then feeding it things it wasn’t designed to eat. This is perhaps the greatest efficiency of a farm treated as a biological system: health.

Each of us has the ability to act powerfully for change; together we can restore that ancient and sustaining harmony.

When you are told 'you cannot change the world', is because you are already doing it.

Why is it that so many people start to value money so much that they trade in most of the hours and years of their life in order to get it?

When we flood our creative problem-solving mind with the endorphins of gratitude, we are open to receiving the spectacular solutions that are needed now to ensure that generations to come will enjoy this beautiful blue ball that we call home.

While the word charity connotes a single act of giving, justice speaks to right living, of aligning oneself with the world in a way that sustains rather than exploits the rest of creation.

Energy is essential for development, and sustainable energy is essential for sustainable development.

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. And by the grace of God, I will.

Equity, dignity, happiness, sustainability - these are all fundamental to our lives but absent in the GDP.

Philanthropy without scale and sustainability is like any other bad business that will simply wither and die on the vine.

I firmly believe that we can have a healthy environment and a sustainable timber industry.

Sustainability has become a religion in architecture - not that there's anything wrong with it - but I think it has to work both ways. Everyone thinks architecture has to be subservient to sustainability, but what if we thought in the other direction, like, what can sustainability do to make architecture more exciting?

Sustainability is another word for justice, for what is just is sustainable and what is unjust is not.

Sustainability is the key to our survival on this planet and will also determine success on all levels.

Sustainability: It's the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do, it's the profitable thing to do.

... placing economic activity in the context of the whole earth requires attention to the question of scale. Bigger is obviously not better, so the optimum scale of human economy in relation to the total economy becomes basically a question of sustainability. When the effects of the economy on the environment undercut the possibility of its own continuance, the scale is too large.

Sustainability is a set of conditions and trends in a given system that can continue indefinitely

The funny thing about sustainability is you gotta sustain it.

The thing that I champion is sustainability. My terror is that suddenly we see it as a luxury, not an essential. That's a danger.

The specific danger is us; we are rampant; this earth is our only friend; we are destroying it increment by increment at a horrific rate. We must understand that we can't buy it back.

You didn't have to be a huge rock star; you just had to do well enough to continue doing what you wanted to do. It wasn't about hitting the jackpot, it was about sustainability.

To the extent that hiring in high-wage, developed economies continues to lag, the sustainability of any impetus to private consumption can be drawn into serious question.

We will instead have to measure our economy by the health of the ecosystems and human communities where we do our work.

A photograph of a disposable diaper floating in the arctic miles away from human habitat fueled my daily determination to save at least one disposable diaper from being used and created. One cloth diaper after another, days accumulated into years and now our next child is using the cloth diapers we bought for our firstborn.

Business is the most important institution on the planet for furthering human flourishing.

A prosperous and sustainable future can only be secured through greater equality and collaboration.

A sacred way of life connects us to the people and places around us. That means that a sacred economy must be in large part a local economy, in which we have multidimensional, personal relationships with the land and people who meet our needs, and whose needs are met in turn.

As the 'circular' approach to sustainability begins to gather ground, we humans are finding ourselves within the circle, not without.

...a woman smart and persistent enough that even a PhD in psychology hasn't clouded her insight into how people think and act.

Ban privileges. The rules of the game should be the same to all players, regardless of their size, location, or any other criteria

Creating the kind of connections between people that lead to collective civic action, political expression, community dialogue, shared cultural experiences.

Can we actually suppose that we are wasting, polluting, and making ugly this beautiful land for the sake of patriotism and the love of God? Perhaps some of us would like to think so, but in fact this destruction is taking place because we have allowed ourselves to believe, and to live, a mated pair of economic lies: that nothing has a value that is not assigned to it by the market; and that the economic life of our communities can safely be handed over to the great corporations. (from 'Compromise, Hell!' published in the November/December 2004 issue of ORION magazine)

Creativity is the only energy that should never be saved.

Caterpillars chew their way through ecosystems leaving a path of destruction as they get fatter and fatter. When they finally fall asleep and a chrysalis forms around them, tiny new imaginal cells, as biologists call them, begin to take form within their bodies. The caterpillar’s immune system fights these new cells as though they were foreign intruders, and only when they crop up in greater numbers and link themselves together are they strong enough to survive. Then the caterpillar’s immune system fails and its body dissolves into a nutritive soup which the new cells recycle into their developing butterfly. The caterpillar is a necessary stage but becomes unsustainable once its job is done. There is no point in being angry with it and there is no need to worry about defeating it. The task is to focus on building the butterfly, the success of which depends on powerful positive and creative efforts in all aspects of society and alliances built among those engaged in them.

Feeling at home anywhere on earth, and a foreigner even in the country where I was born, I consider myself an earthling, a citizen of the world. I love nature dearly and all creatures that contribute to make it what it is. I see the beauty in all expressions of life, and I see how blind so many of us still are. Our planet is remarkably abundant and there's more than enough for us all. It is greed and shortsightedness that create the illusion of scarcity. I have lived through tremendous adventures and survived only because other people risked their lives for me. Realising how interconnected and interdependent we all are, I am neither shy or embarrassed when it is time for me lean on another to ask for help. And when I have the opportunity to help another, I view it as my duty and privilege.

Deep inside, we still have a longing to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination