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Quote by David W. Orr

“The planetary emergency unfolding around us is, first and foremost...a crisis of thought, values, perceptions, ideas and judgments. In other words, it is a crisis of mind, which makes it a crisis of those institutions which purport to improve minds.”

Quote by David W. Orr

Author

David W. Orr (b. 1944) is a prominent American environmental educator, author, and professor at Oberlin College. He is widely recognized as a pioneer in environmental education, focusing on ecological literacy, sustainability, and green campus design. Orr authored influential books such as 'Ecological Literacy' and 'Earth in Mind,' and led the creation of the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies at Oberlin, one of the greenest buildings globally. His work has significantly shaped environmental education, ecological design, and public policy. more

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“A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in an amalgam of the accouterments trappings of mass civilization, and who has no roots in the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his own personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this demoralization, deepens it, is in fact a projection of it into society.”

“The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.”

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Book:Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays

Source: Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays

“Responsibility is something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success. Responsibility to the order of Being, where, and only where, they will be properly judged.”

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Author:Vaclav Havel

“There can be no solution to the challenge of climate change that is not global. But if we can come together in partnership, we can transform today's challenge into tomorrow's opportunity - an opportunity for green growth and sustainable prosperity... we also need a strong bottom-up push from academics and opinion-shapers such as you. Universities such as yours are founts of ideas and innovation. They are furnaces of innovation and entrepreneurship. So, send forth this word.”

“There would be no call for ecological campaigning had nature not been exploited and abused. We experience the ground now bringing forth thistles as soil erosion devastates formerly arable land and deserts overtake fertile farms. Rivers and the atmosphere are polluted thoughtlessly and we are fearful of the consequences of a depleted ozone layer and the devastation of the greenhouse effect. We are not quite at home in our world, and somewhere in each of us there is a nostalgia for a paradise that has been lost.”

“To build enormous palaces, to conquer or to mimic nature, to ransack the world in order to gratify the passions of a man, is not thought of, but to add a few yards of land to your field, to plant an orchard, or enlarge a dwelling, to always be making life more comfortable and convenient, to avoid trouble, and to satisfy the smallest wants without effort and almost without cost. These are small objects, but the soul clings to them; it dwells upon them closely and day by day, till they at last shut out the rest of the world and sometimes intervene between itself and heaven.”

“To sustain an environment suitable for man, we must fight on a thousand battlegrounds. Despite all of our wealth and knowledge, we cannot create a redwood forest, a wild river, or a gleaming seashore.”

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Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966

“Unrestrained automobility, hedonism, individualism, and conspicuous consumption cannot be sustained because they take more than they give back. A spiritually impoverished world cannot be sustained because meaninglessness, anomie, and despair will corrode the desire to be sustained and the belief that humanity is worth sustaining. But these are the very things that distinguish the modern age from its predecessors, Genuine sustainability, in other words, will come not from superficial changes but from a deeper process akin to humankind growing up to a fuller stature.”

“We are challenged to develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one.”

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Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We are now, measurably, reducing the availability of these life-supporting goods which we can think of (though only on the conditions of good health and good care) as self-renewing or "sustainable." We are also destroying rapidly the supplies of the fossil fuels, which are limited and not renewable, and on which we have become totally dependent.”

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Book:The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays

Source: The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays