I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.
—Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
A teacher of fear can’t bring peace on earth. We have been trying to do it that way for thousands of years. The person who turns inner violence around, the person who finds peace inside and lives it, is the one who teaches what true peace is. We are waiting for just one teacher. You’re the one.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b.1929) American Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer
Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home.
—Bill Cosby (b.1937) American Actor, Comedian, Activist, Producer, Author
Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
—Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali Poet, Polymath
You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.
—William Watson Purkey (b.1929) American Educationalist
I thought how utterly we have forsaken the Earth, in the sense of excluding it from our thoughts. There are but few who consider its physical hugeness, its rough enormity. It is still a disparate monstrosity, full of solitudes, barrens, wilds. It still dwarfs, terrifies, crushes. The rivers still roar, the mountains still crash, the winds still shatter. Man is an affair of cities. His gardens, orchards and fields are mere scrapings. Somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the face of the giant from his windows. But the giant is there, nevertheless.
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American Poet
I have no patience for those who say that poverty is a blessing. Poverty is the greatest curse on earth.
—Roger McDonald (b.1941) Australian Novelist, Poet, Screenwriter, Writer
There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
When your heart becomes the grave of your secrets, that desire of yours will be gained more quickly. The prophet said that anyone who keeps secret his inmost thought will soon attain the object of his desire. When seeds are buried in the earth, their inward secrets become the flourishing garden.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–73) Persian Muslim Mystic
Earth, thou great footstool of our God, who reigns on high; thou fruitful source of all our raiment, life, and food; our house, our parent, and our nurse.
—Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English Hymn writer
There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.
—Rachel Carson (1907–64) American Naturalist, Science Writer
The earth, that is nature’s mother, is her tomb.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Let’s pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.
—C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) Irish-born British Academic, Author, Literary Scholar
Earth took her shining station as a star, In Heaven’s dark hall, high up the crowd of worlds.
—Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American Writer, Aphorist
I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
Earth’s the right place for love. I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
Through all these new, imaginative, and creative approaches to the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures there runs a constant theme, the awareness that we are dealing with life with living populations and all their pressures and counter pressures, their surges and recessions. Only by taking account of such life forces and by cautiously seeking to guide them into channels favorable to ourselves can we hope to achieve a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves.
The current vogue for poisons has failed utterly to take into account these most fundamental considerations. As crude a weapon as the cave man’s club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no high-minded orientation, no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper.
The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modem and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.
—Rachel Carson (1907–64) American Naturalist, Science Writer
Let me enjoy the earth no less
Because the all-enacting Might
That fashioned forth its loveliness
Had other aims than my delight.
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English Novelist, Poet
The earth was made so various, that the mind of desultory man, studious of change, and pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
—William Cowper (1731–1800) English Anglican Poet, Hymn writer
Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills—against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the World, and 32 year old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. ‘Give me a place to stand,’ said Archimedes, ‘and I will move the world.’ These men moved the world, and so can we all.
—Robert F. Kennedy (1925–68) American Politician, Civil Rights Activist
There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) American Military Leader
Do you know anyone who hasn’t changed his mind? This door was a tree, then it will be firewood for someone, then it will return to air and earth. We’re all like that, constantly changing. It’s simply honest to report that you’ve changed your mind when you have. When you’re afraid of what people will think if you speak honestly, that’s where you become confused.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
You are good when you strive to give of yourself. Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself. For when you strive for gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast. Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, ‘Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance.’ For to the fruit giving is a need as receiving is a need to the root.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-born American Philosopher, Poet, Painter, Theologian, Sculptor
In the broad earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed perfection.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours and God’s. Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our business. When I think, “You need to get a job, I want you to be happy, you should be on time, you need to take better care of yourself,” I am in your business. When I’m worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God’s business. If I am mentally in your business or in God’s business, the effect is separation.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
In practice, a global approach is needed when dealing with the problems of the spaceship earth which affect all of mankind. But local solutions, inevitably conditioned by local interests, are required for the problems peculiar to each human settlement.
—Rene Dubos (1901–82) French-American Microbiologist, Environmentalist, Author
Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
—W. W. Ziege
In every forest, on every farm, in every orchard on earth, it’s what’s under the ground that creates what’s above the ground. That’s why placing your attention on the fruits that you have already grown is futile. You cannot change the fruits that are already hanging on the tree. You can, however, change tomorrow’s fruits. But to do so, you will have to dig below the ground and strengthen the roots.
—T. Harv Eker (b.1954) American Motivational Speaker, Lecturer, Author
Where is the dust that has not been alive?—The spade and the plough disturb our ancestors.—From human mold we reap our daily bread.
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
I believe the earth on which we stand is but the vestibule to glorious mansions, to which a moving crowd is forever pressing.
—Joanna Baillie (1762–1851) Scottish Playwright, Poet
If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.
—Joseph Wood Krutch (1893–1970) American Writer, Critic, Naturalist
Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.
—Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) American Sportsperson
You weren’t an accident. You weren’t mass produced. You aren’t an assembly-line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on the Earth by the Master Craftsman.
—Max Lucado (b.1955) American Christian Author, Minister
The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure. As stars high above earth, you are above everything distressing. But you must awaken to it. Wake up!
—Baruch Spinoza (1632–77) Dutch Philosopher, Theologian
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
—John Burroughs (1837–1921) American Naturalist, Writer
Now there is one outstanding important fact regarding spaceship earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.
—Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American Inventor, Philosopher
As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can. As long as the Earth can flower and produce nurturing fruit, I can, because I’m the Earth. I won’t give up until the Earth gives up.
—Alice Walker (b.1944) American Novelist, Activist
Today we come across an individual who behaves like an automaton, who does not know or understand himself, and the only person that he knows is the person that he is supposed to be, whose meaningless chatter has replaced communicative speech, whose synthetic smile has replaced genuine laughter, and whose sense of dull despair has taken the place of genuine pain. Two statements may be said concerning this individual. One is that he suffers from defects of spontaneity and individuality which may seem to be incurable. At the same time it may be said of him he does not differ essentially from the millions of the rest of us who walk upon this earth.
—Erich Fromm (1900–80) German-American Psychoanalyst, Social Philosopher
The growth of the human mind is still high adventure, in many ways the highest adventure on earth.
—Norman Cousins (1915–90) American Journalist, Author, Academic, Activist
The spirit of a warrior is not geared to indulging and complaining, nor is it geared to winning or losing. The spirit of a warrior is geared only to struggle, and every struggle is a warrior’s last battle on earth. Thus the outcome matters very little to him. In his last battle on earth a warrior lets his spirit flow free and clear. And as he wages his battle, knowing that his intent is impeccable, a warrior laughs and laughs.
—Carlos Castaneda (1925–98) Peruvian-born American Anthropologist, Author
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
The waters deluge man with rain, oppress him with hail, and drown him with inundations; the air rushes in storms, prepares the tempest, or lights up the volcano; but the earth, gentle and indulgent, ever subservient to the wants of man, spreads his walks with flowers, and his table with plenty; returns, with interest, every good committed to her care; and though she produces the poison, she still supplies the antidote; though constantly teased more to furnish the luxuries of man than his necessities, yet even to the last she continues her kind indulgence, and, when life is over, she piously covers his remains in her bosom.
—Pliny the Elder (23–79CE) Roman Statesman, Scholar
You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
—Wendell Berry (b.1934) American Poet, Novelist, Environmentalist
Man makes a great fuss about this planet which is only a ballbearing in the hub of the universe.
—Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American Novelist, Essayist
A warrior-hunter knows that his death is waiting, and the very act he is performing now may well be his last battle on earth. He calls it a battle because it is a struggle. Most people move from act to act without any struggle or thought. A warrior-hunter, on the contrary, assesses every act; and since he has intimate knowledge of his death, he proceeds judiciously, as if every act were his last battle. Only a fool would fail to notice advantage a warrior-hunter has over his fellow men. A warrior-hunter gives his last battle its due respect. It’s only natural that his last act on earth should be the best of himself. It’s pleasurable that way. It dulls the edge of his fright.
—Carlos Castaneda (1925–98) Peruvian-born American Anthropologist, Author