Quotessence
Home / Topics / Biodiversity Quotes

Biodiversity Quotes

Browse 161 quotes about Biodiversity.

Related topics

SpeciesEnvironmentWorldHumansNatureLossPlanetsEnvironmentalPeopleAnimalIfsMenNaturalNeedsPlantWaterEarthClimateClimate ChangeDiversityThinkingValuesWay

Biodiversity Quotes

“It is not that species become extinct – all species will eventually become extinct. It is that we hasten extinction for so many species before we even know them or understand them, before we have grasped the way of the world and our place in it – when so much suffering could be avoided, with just a little pause and meditation on this journey of life. We are not wiser than the animals we kill and the species we are driving to extinction. We are like rampaging bulls, goaded into action by forces we do not understand, trampling through fields full of priceless treasures. We are able to deviate from this thoughtless, violent mediocrity. We must if we are to survive.”

LifeCompassionExtinctionBiodiversity
Book:Ethics of Life: freedom and diversity
Create image

“Compassion can be lost as easily as species, and when it goes, then plants and animals are sure to follow. It is not enough simply to bequeath biodiversity to future generations without also passing on a sense of its significance and, perhaps hardest of all, a genuine love of life on Earth.”

NatureCompassionClimate ChangeLegacyNature QuotesBiodiversity
Book:Few and Far Between: On The Trail of Britain's Rarest Animals
Create image

“E. Raymond Hall, professor of biology at the University of Kansas, wrote the authoritative work on American wildlife, Mammals of North America. He stated as a biological law that, “two subspecies of the same species do not occur in the same geographic area.” Prof. Hall explains that human races are biological subspecies, and that the law applied to them, too: “To imagine one subspecies of man living together on equal terms for long with another subspecies is but wishful thinking and leads only to disaster and oblivion for one or the other.” In recent decades we have seen what Prof. Hall was writing about in the Balkans, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Eastern Congo. We call it “ethnic cleansing.” In Zimbabwe there is a systematic effort to rid the country of whites, and some observers do not rule out similar efforts in South Africa and Namibia. Is it utterly unrealistic to imagine ethnic cleansing in the United States? Prof. Hall’s forebodings do not appear outlandish in some of our schools, prisons, and neighborhoods. The demographic forces we have set in motion have created conditions that are inherently unstable and potentially violent. All other groups are growing in numbers and have a vivid racial identity. Only whites have no racial identity, are constantly on the defensive, and constantly in retreat. They have a choice: regain a sense of identity and the resolve to maintain their numbers, their traditions, and their way of life—or face oblivion.”

RaceIdentityDiversityBiologyDemographicsBiodiversity
Book:White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century
Create image

“Mother Earth is our first teacher. She has informed us that oneness does not equal sameness. She shows us this through the harmonious balance that is held in the rich biodiversity that exists within our world. To achieve oneness we must transcend our differences and embrace the integration of every individual aspect of humanity into the whole, knowing that all healthy systems are comprised of complexity and an abundance of diversity.”

DiversityOnenessBiodiversityNative American WisdomNative American Writer
Author:Sherri Mitchell Weh'na Ha'mu Kwasset
Create image

“Jonathan Sacks; “One way is just to think, for instance, of biodiversity. The extraordinary thing we now know, thanks to Crick and Watson’s discovery of DNA and the decoding of the human and other genomes, is that all life, everything, all the three million species of life and plant life—all have the same source. We all come from a single source. Everything that lives has its genetic code written in the same alphabet. Unity creates diversity. So don’t think of one God, one truth, one way. Think of one God creating this extraordinary number of ways, the 6,800 languages that are actually spoken. Don’t think there’s only one language within which we can speak to God. The Bible is saying to us the whole time: Don’t think that God is as simple as you are. He’s in places you would never expect him to be. And you know, we lose a bit of that in English translation. When Moses at the burning bush says to God, “Who are you?” God says to him three words: “Hayah asher hayah.”Those words are mistranslated in English as “I am that which I am.” But in Hebrew, it means “I will be who or how or where I will be,” meaning, Don’t think you can predict me. I am a God who is going to surprise you. One of the ways God surprises us is by letting a Jew or a Christian discover the trace of God’s presence in a Buddhist monk or a Sikh tradition of hospitality or the graciousness of Hindu life. Don’t think we can confine God into our categories. God is bigger than religion.”

LoveSoulGodWisdomTruthSpiritualSpiritReligionEnergyBeautyDiversityUnityToleranceDnaJudaismEpiphanyBiodiversityGenomesWisdom Traditions
Book:Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living
Create image

“Ethiopia is the center of origin and diversity for the majority of coffee we drink. The commodification of coffee pushes farmers to grow as much as possible by whatever means possible. This has contributed to deforestation. The place where coffee was born - the area with the greatest biodiversity of coffee anywhere in the world - could disappear. No forest, no coffee. No coffee, no forest. What we lose isn't specific to Ethiopia; it impacts us all.”

FoodCoffeeBiodiversityEthiopiaDeforestation
Book:Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love
Create image

“...a study of all 50 U.S. States found that those states marked out by large inequalities of power in terms of income and ethnicity had weaker environmental policies and suffered greater ecological degradation. Furthermore, one study covering 50 countries found the more unequal a country is, the more likely the biodiversity of its landscape is to be under threat.”

EconomicsEqualityInequalityEthnicityEnvironmental ProtectionBiodiversityIncome InequalityEnvironmental Degradation
Book:Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
Create image

“I'm not a vegetarian, I could eat anything if it's well cooked and tastes good, but preservation of wildlife is nonnegotiable, because it is only by preserving biodiversity, that we ensure a sustainable planet for humanity. It is one thing to consume animals for food, and another to destroy entire ecosystems for profit. There is nothing wrong in development, but development founded on destruction of nature, is the most expensive ticket to human extinction.”

EnvironmentDevelopmentSustainabilityWildlifeSustainable DevelopmentEnvironmental ProtectionBiodiversityDeforestationEcosystem
Book:Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat
Create image

“If we treat our forests right, we can at least ameliorate the declines in forest extent and diversity and the consequent impoverishment of the aesthetic, economic, climatic, and spiritual benefits we count on from them.”

EnvironmentClimate ChangeEcologyBiodiversityWildfiresPacific NorthwestForest EcologySocially ConsciousFiled Guide
Book:Trees in Trouble: Wildfires, Infestations, and Climate Change
Create image

“Humanity should not remain insensitive to the forest fire or wildfire every year. Unless we act, the loss of biodiversity and extinction of herbs, birds and animals and the pains of the trees, birds, animals and the poor is also alarming signal for the extinction of humanity itself.”

Human RightsTreesBirdsBiodiversityWildfireForest FireExtinction Of HumanityHuman And Nature
Book:Nuclear Weapons Free World - Peace on the Earth
Create image

“The beauty in the genome is of course that it's so small. The human genome is only on the order of a gigabyte of data...which is a tiny little database. If you take the entire living biosphere, that's the assemblage of 20 million species or so that constitute all the living creatures on the planet, and you have a genome for every species the total is still about one petabyte, that's a million gigabytes - that's still very small compared with Google or the Wikipedia and it's a database that you can easily put in a small room, easily transmit from one place to another. And somehow mother nature manages to create this incredible biosphere, to create this incredibly rich environment of animals and plants with this amazingly small amount of data.”

NatureWonderInformationDataBiologyAnimalsDnaPlantsBiodiversityGenomeBiosphereSequencingDna Sequencing
Author:Freeman Dyson
Create image

“One... misconception is the idea that England is now mostly concreted over. Coupled to this is the idea that the onward march of bricks and mortar is the main cause of declining species and habitats. Neither assertion is true. Just 8.8 per cent of England is built on; 73 per cent is farmland, and 10 per cent is forestry. The biggest drivers of biodiversity loss in this country are modern agriculture, forestry and shooting. ...the greatest threat to the countryside comes from within it.”

EnglandShootingAgricultureCountrysideBiodiversityForestryHabitats
Book:The Lie of the Land
Create image

“Humans were designed to be the choir directors of creation's praises to God... And the tremendous biodiversity of creation lends rich harmonies to this choir's praise of our Creator. The greater the ecological diversity, the greater potential to maximize praise.”

InspirationalChristianScienceNatureOceanMemoirBiodiversityScubaMarine BiologyFaith And Science
Book:If the Ocean Has a Soul: A Marine Biologist's Pursuit of Truth through Deep Waters of Faith and Science
Create image

“Food security is an authentically human requirement. Guaranteeing it for present and future generations also means safeguarding ourselves against the uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources. Indeed, the process of consumption and waste seems to overlook any concern for ... biodiversity, which is so important for agriculture.”

HumansMeanImportantSeemsProcessNaturalGenerationsLandSecurityWasteResourcesConcernConsumptionAgricultureExploitationRequirementsFuture GenerationNatural ResourcesBiodiversityFood SecuritySafeguarding
Author:Pope Benedict XVI
Create image

“I think that the environmental movement is wisely moving away from a largely emotion-based argument for the spiritual or intrinsic value of Nature with a capital "N" and evolving toward a very hard-nosed case for the economic value of natural capital, ecosystem services, biodiversity, etc.”

ThinkingHardSpiritualMovingValuesNaturalEmotionCasesEconomicMovementArgumentEnvironmentalEvolveEtcEcosystemsBiodiversityMoving AwayIntrinsic ValueEconomic Value
Author:Edward Norton
Create image

“I want to do the right things - I want to plant trees, I want to make sure that the indigenous forests are protected because I know, whatever happens, these are the forests that contain biodiversity, these are the forests that help us retain water when it rains and keep our rivers flowing, these are the forests that many future generations will need.”

KnowsWantNeedsHelpingHappensWaterGenerationsTreeRainRiversPlantForestsRight ThingProtectedIndigenousFuture GenerationWhatever HappensBiodiversityPlant A Tree
Author:Wangari Maathai
Create image

“First thing the developer has to do is to get an assessment of the threatened species, of the ecological values of that site. At the moment, that developer lodges an application, there's usually trade-offs, negotiations, you end up with remnant bits of land. You might end up with some other offset land that the public has to run. There's no cohesive system of then making sure that we maintain and improve biodiversity values.”

FirstsEndsMomentsMightRunningValuesBitsLandTradeSpeciesApplicationSiteThreatenedNegotiationEcologicalAssessmentBiodiversityDevelopersRemnantsLodgesTrade Offs
Author:Frank Sartor
Create image

“Somewhere close I knew spear-nosed bats flew through the tree crowns in search of fruit, palm vipers coiled in ambush in the roots of orchids, jaguars walked the river's edge; around them eight hundred species of trees stood, more than are native to all of North America; and a thousand species of butterflies, 6 percent of the entire world fauna, waited for the dawn.”

WorldAmericaTreeThousandPercentHundredRiversRootsSpeciesFruitEdgesEightDawnNativeButterflyCrownsBatsPalmsFlewSpearsNorth AmericaBiodiversityOrchidsAmbushVipersJaguars
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image