“The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity -- then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.” IfsWorldWayLooksDifferentMotherOpportunityWaterNatureChallengesGreaterLandPlanetsPerspectiveShapesMountainResourcesRiversTreatsSacredSpeciesForestsVeinsDeitiesDifferent PerspectiveGroveTimberIrrigation Author:David Suzuki
“It's the old idea that the process of evolution is some push in the direction of greater complexity--in particular greater intellectual complexity. In one twig of the tree of life, namely ours, having a big brain happened to have advantages. But that's just what worked for a particular species of primate 5 to 7 million years ago.” YearsIdeasBigsProcessBrainMillionsGreaterHappenedTreeParticularEvolutionIntellectualAdvantageYears AgoSpeciesComplexityTree Of LifePrimatesTwigsOld Ideas Author:Steven Pinker
“Though there is a benevolence due to all mankind, none can question but a superior degree of it is to be paid to a father, a wife, or child. In the same manner, though our love should reach to the whole species, a greater proportion of it should exert itself towards that community in which Providence has placed us. This is our proper sphere of action, the province allotted us for the exercise of our civil virtues, and in which alone we have opportunities of expressing our goodwill to mankind.” ShouldChildrenWholeActionFatherOpportunityCommunityVirtueGreaterWifeMankindExerciseDegreesPaidSpeciesDuesSuperiorsProportionSpheresProvidenceOur LoveBenevolenceGoodwillProvinces Book:Essays Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste Source: Essays Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste
“We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biological species and stretches back over many thousand millennia... Going further back, we share a common ancestry with our fellow primates; and going still further back, we share a common ancestry with all other living creatures and plants down to the simplest microbe. The further back we go, the greater the difference from external appearances and behavior patterns which we observe today.” LongStillsTodayDifferencesResultsCommonGreaterShareProductsEvolutionBirthThousandCreaturesBehaviorFellowsPlantSpeciesPatternsAppearanceHeritageSimplestAdaptationAncestryLiving CreaturesPrimatesMutationMicrobesBehavior PatternsExternal Appearance Author:Fred Hoyle
“The French manner of hunting is gentlemanlike; ours is only for bumpkins and bodies. The poor beasts here are pursued and run downby much greater beasts than themselves; and the true British fox-hunter is most undoubtedly a species appropriated and peculiar to this country, which no other part of the globe produces.” CountryBodyRunningPoorGreaterProduceSpeciesBritishBeastPeculiarHuntingGlobesFoxesHuntersPursued Author:Lord Chesterfield
“The evolutionary vision is agnostic in regard to systems in the universe of greater complexity than those of which human beings have clear knowledge. It recognizes aesthetic, moral, and religious ideas and experiences as a species, in this case of mental structures or of images, which clearly interacts with other species in the world's great' ecosystem.” WorldHumansIdeasUniverseReligiousHuman BeingsMoralVisionCasesClearGreaterRegardStructureSpeciesComplexityAestheticAgnosticEcosystems Author:Kenneth E. Boulding
“In all mammalian species that have so far been carefully studied, the rate at which their members engage in the killing of conspecifics is several thousand times greater than the highest homicide rate in any American city.” CitiesGreaterThousandMembersHighestSpeciesKillingRateHomicideAmerican Cities Author:Daniel Dennett
“A billion homo sapiens are added every 11 years to the planet. The hypertrophy of a single species pushes other life-forms out of bed and into extinction. The decline of biological diversity is real and severe. The alarming loss of soil fertility, forest cover, and coral reef viability and the release of fossilized CO2 that nature put away 300 million years ago in its march toward greater diversity - all these "losses" and many others are the result of one life-form annihilating other life-forms in its immoral confusion of "dominion" with "domination."” YearsRealFormLossResultsMillionsGreaterPlanetsBedDiversityYears AgoSpeciesEnvironmentalBillionsForestsConfusionReleaseSoilMarchDeclineSevereDominationImmoralExtinctionStewardshipDominionHomo SapiensFertilityCo2ReefsCoral Reefs Author:Leonard Sweet
“I am interested and deeply curious about our need for a spiritual life, a life of greater meaning, and how we come to a more ethical view of life within our communities that is more inclusive than exclusive, one that is extended even beyond our own species.” NeedsSpiritualCommunityViewsGreaterSpeciesCuriousEthicalSpiritual LifeExclusiveOur Community Author:Terry Tempest Williams
“For as to the dispersing of Books, that Circumstance does perhaps as much harm as good: Since Nonsense flies with greater Celerity, and makes greater Impression than Reason; though indeed no particular species of Nonsense is so durable. But the several Forms of Nonsense never cease succeeding one another; and Men are always under the Dominion of some one or other, though nothing was ever equal in Absurdity and Wickedness to our present Patriotism.” MenDoeBookReasonFormGreaterParticularCircumstancesSucceedEqualSpeciesHarmCeaseImpressionNonsenseAbsurdityWickednessDominion Book:The Letters of David Hume: Source: The Letters of David Hume: