#Sustainability Quotes

“Show me a healthy community with a healthy economy and I will show you a community that has its green infrastructure in order and understands the relationship between the built and the unbuilt environment.”

“To create an extraordinary quality of life, you must create a vision that's not only obtainable, but that is sustainable.”

“If you do extreme exercise to lose weight, you'll usually soon stop because you get injured or because it's simply too rigorous to do for a lifetime.”

“We Americans think we are pretty good! We want to build a house, we cut down some trees. We want to build a fire, we dig a little coal. But when we run out of all these things, then we will find out just how good we really are.”

“Rotation of crops and less automobiles will relieve the farmers whenever they decide to try it.”

“Horses raise what the farmer eats and eats what the farmer raises. You can't plow the ground and get gasoline.”

“It wasn't what we needed then that was hurting us, it was what we was paying for that we had already used up. The country was just buying gasoline for a leaky tank. Everything was going into a gopher hole and you couldent see where you was going to get any of it back.”

“The only way a relationship will last is if you see it as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.”

“All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world.”

“The immediate need for education and practice in using our natural resources of soil, forest, water, wildlife and areas of inspirational beauty to the best advantage of all, for this generation and others to come, is again apparent to every observant citizen.”

“A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless; forests which are so used that they cannot renew themselves will soon vanish, and with them all their benefits. A true forest is not merely a storehouse full of wood, but, as it were, a factory of wood and at the same time a reservoir of water. When you help to preserve our forests or plant new ones you are acting the part of good citizens.”

“Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.”

“Conservation means development as much as it does protection.”

“Wild beasts and birds are by right not the property merely of the people today, but the property of the unborn generations, whose belongings we have no right to squander.”

“We are consuming our forests three times faster than they are being reproduced. Some of the richest timber lands of this continent have already been destroyed, and not replaced, and other vast areas are on the verge of destruction. Yet forests, unlike mines, can be so handled as to yield the best results of use, without exhaustion, just like grain fields.”

“The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.”

“Our country, we have faith to believe, is only at the beginning of its growth. Unless the forests of the United States can be made ready to meet the vast demands which this growth will inevitably bring, commercial disaster, that means disaster to the whole country, is inevitable.”

“Conservation means development as much as it does protection.A man's usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals insofar as he can.”

“Conservation of our resources is the fundamental question before this nation, and that our first and greatest task is to set our house in order and begin to live within our means.”

“The farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself.”

“We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted...So any nation which in its youth lives only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumes without husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of life.”

“Conservation and rural-life policies are really two sides of the same policy; and down at the bottom this policy rests upon the fundamental law that neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing with the present, thought is steadily given for the future.”

“Whatever it is, handle it so that your children's children will get the benefit of it.”

“There's enough on this planet for everyone's needs but not for everyone's greed.”

“The idea of the industrial fishing affects everyone. Those factory ships play this game of hit and run with the international fishing limits, and somebody said it's like hunting squirrels with a bulldozer. They pull everything in and they are only looking for certain types of fish and everything else dies and they just throw it back. It's like chumming.”

“World has things which full fill man needs, but not greeds.”

“The world is big enough to satisfy everyones needs, but will always be too small to satisfy everyones greed”

“The earth, the air, the land and the water are not an inheritance from our fore fathers but on loan from our children. So we have to handover to them at least as it was handed over to us.”

“Nature can provide for the needs of people; [she] can't provide for the greed of people.”

“There is enough for the need of everyone in this world, but not for the greed of everyone.”

“The earth has enough resources for our need, but not for our greed.”

“There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.”

“The spinning wheel is the one thing to which all must turn to in the Indian clime for the transition stage at any rate and the vast majority must for all time.”

“Pounding an edge to sharpness will not make it last.”

“The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones.”

“Those who take long steps cannot keep the pace.”

“There is always enough for the needy, there is never enough for the greedy.”

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.”

“The earth has everything for all human needs, but nothing for his greed.”

“Reaching the top is a monumental achievement, but remaining there may be the most spectacular feat of all.”

“Over time, is it easier or harder to sustain your influence within your organization? With charisma alone, influence becomes increasingly more difficult to sustain. With character, as time passes, influence builds and requires less work to sustain.”

“A business which exists to make one man or one family rich, and whose existence is of no moment when this is achieved, is not solidly founded.”

“The only prosperity the people can afford to be satisfied with is the kind that lasts”

“I foresee the time when industry shall no longer denude the forests which require generations to mature, nor use up the mines which were ages in making, but shall draw its raw material largely from the annual produce of the fields. I am convinced that we shall be able to get out of yearly crops most of the basic materials which we now get from forest and mine.”

“There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.”

“Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?”

“The handling of our forests as a continuous, renewable resource means permanent employment and stability to our country life. The forests are also needed for mitigating extreme climatic fluctuations, holding the soil on the slopes, retaining the moisture in the ground, and controlling the equable flow of water in our streams.”

“A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.”

“I think that if people would be willing to grow some of their own food or eat locally grown organic foods on a regular basis we could significantly decrease the amount of harmful chemicals we pump into our soil every day.”

“We think of our land and water and human resources not as static and sterile possessions but as life giving assets to be directed by wise provisions for future days.”