Ecology Quotes

“Wolves directly affect the entire ecosystem, not just moose populations, their main prey, because less moose equals more tree growth”
― Rolf Peterson

“Le regard analytique et le regard intuitif sur la vie ne peuvent s'harmoniser dans un même être que dans la mesure où le premier est subordonné au second. C'est du second, et notamment du sentiment de beauté et de compassion qu'il enferme, que découle le sens de la totalité de même que celui des équilibres et de la limite. Le regard intuitif est la condition de la sagesse sans laquelle le regard analytique peut conduire à des excès suicidaires. L'analyse des phénomènes donne de la puissance sur eux, elle permet de dominer la nature, mais elle n'enferme aucune indication quant aux limites qu'il convient d'assigner à cette puissance.”
― James Lovelock

“Si l'organisme vivant est un system hiérarchisé dont le niveau d'organisation est au-dessus du niveau chimique, il est alors évident qu'il doit être étudié à tous les niveaux et qu'une recherche limitée à l'un d'entre eux (niveaux chimique par exemple) ne peut remplacer celle effectuée aux niveau supérieurs.”
― J.H. Woodger

“Il faut regarder la configuration ensemble pour déterminer le comportement des parties et non l'inverse.”
― Paul Weiss

“Il nous faut partir d'une conception d'ensemble de l'organisme en tant qu'une entité fondamentale de la biologie, puis comprendre comment celui-ci se divise en parties qui respectent son ordre intrinsèque - pour donner un organisme harmonieusement intégré en dépit de sa complexité.”
― Brian Goodwin

“Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. … That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.”
― Aldo Leopold, Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation (Library of America: Written by Aldo Leopold, 2013 Edition, (Reprint) Publisher: Library of America [Hardcover]

“A common misconception is that rewilding seeks to return land to an idealised previous ecological state. In reality it would never be possible to go back in time to some arbitrarily chosen baseline -- and it would be arbitrary, because healthy living systems are always changing naturally over time, even if that's often difficult for us to perceive. The real objective is not to go back to the past, but forward: to complex, vibrant ecosystems that actually work by themselves, and are therefore more resilient in the face of climate breakdown and other shocks coming down the line. As has been said before, the aim of rewilding isn't to turn the ecological clock back in time, but to allow it to actually start ticking again.”
― Eoghan Daltun, An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey Into the Magic of Rewilding

“The practice of gratitude lets us hear the badgering of marketers as the stomach grumblings of a Windigo. It celebrates cultures of regenerative reciprocity, where wealth is understood to be having enough to share and riches are counted in mutually beneficial relationships. Besides, it makes us happy.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“It would be laughable to write “Mosquito” if it were in reference to a flying insect, but acceptable if we were discussing a brand of boat. Capitalization conveys a certain distinction, the elevated position of humans and their creations in the hierarchy of beings.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“On és la coherència dels adults? La coherència podria salvar-nos. Que les teves accions reflecteixin les teves paraules. Que les teves accions no facin plorar els infants, de nit. Aconseguir-ho no sembla impossible. Intentem-ho, sense defallir; insistint, una vegada i una altra, en les coses en les quals creiem.”
― Alex Nogués, Feu que les vostres accions reflecteixin les vostres paraules

“Extingir el misteri de milers de descobriments d'espècies desconegudes. Convertir els amagatalls d'un bosc en una planura de monocultiu. Aniquilar milers de futurs d'infants, amb les seves vides asfixiades per l'avarícia d'uns pocs. Estem davant la fi de la bellesa.”
― Alex Nogués, Feu que les vostres accions reflecteixin les vostres paraules

“we are living through is a crisis of society as a whole. By no means restricted to the precincts of finance, it is simultaneously a crisis of economy, ecology, politics, and “care.” A general crisis of an entire form of social organization,”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“confront head on, the real source of crisis and misery, which is capitalism.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“who will guide the process of societal transformation, in whose interest, and to what end?”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“societal reorganization, has played out several times in modern history—largely to capital’s benefit. Seeking to restore profitability, its champions have reinvented capitalism time and again—reconfiguring not only the official economy, but also politics, social reproduction, and our relation to nonhuman nature. In so doing, they have reorganized not only class exploitation, but also gender and racial oppression,”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“Historically, the 1 percent have always been indifferent to the interests of society or the majority. But today they are especially dangerous. In their single-minded pursuit of short-term profits, they fail to gauge not only the depth of the crisis, but also the threat it poses to the long-term health of the capitalist system itself: they would rather drill for oil now than ensure the ecological preconditions for their own future profits!”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“centuries ago, people were more likely to prepare for the end of the world than attempt to save it”
― Darcie Little Badger, Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction

“The footprint of progress must never trample upon the footprint of nature. And so human advancement must never overshadow or destroy nature upon which all life depends.”
― Aloo Denish Obiero

“From the mysterious depths of the ocean to the towering peaks of mountains, let us be stewards of all life forms, protecting the precious balance of ecosystems with unwavering resolve.”
― Aloo Denish Obiero

“The life of a region depends ultimately on its geologic substratum, for this sets up a chain-reaction which passes, determining their character, in turn through its streams and wells, its vegetation and the animal-life that feeds on this, and finally through the type of human being attracted to live there. In a profound sense also the structure of its rocks gives rise to the psychic life of the land: granite, serpentine, slate, sandstone, limestone, chalk and the rest have each their special personality dependant on the age in which they were laid down, each being co-existent with a special phase of the earth-spirit's manifestation.”
― Ithell Colquhoun, The Living Stones: Cornwall

“Environmentalists like to say that defeats are permanent, victories temporary. Extinction, like death, is forever, but protection needs to be maintained. But now, in a world where restoration ecology is becoming increasingly important, it turns out that even defeats aren't always permanent. Across the United States and Europe, dams have been removed, wetlands and rivers restored, once-vanished native species reintroduced, endangered species regenerated.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

“Anyway, I’m rather pessimistic about all this talk of saving the planet. I don’t think we’re going to make it. Everyone’s interests and stakes are so different.”
― Aian D. Grey, EMA

“As the offspring of Platonist-Abrahamic de-enchantment of nature, science bears the birth scar of a world unvalued. Through a kind of emotionally detached childhood, science grew strong but felt little love for its mother, Nature. Consequently, science has had a brilliant career, but as it matured it has tended to deny paternity for two unintended twin offspring: sufferings inflicted and damages done.”
― Carl Safina, Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe

“A forest is not just a bricolage of trees; it is an immensity of functional relationships and feedbacks whereby each thing makes other things possible within the dynamic and constantly adjusting suites of entities and behaviors. A tropical reef is not just coral polyps plus fish but thousands of finely inter-depending life forms in their sunlit fluid environment. A species is not just a pool of DNA; it is all the relationships that create and maintain its node in its network, even as its existence influences the network. A mind is not just the brain; a mind is a feeling experience arising somehow out of the brain's matter and energy. A mind is an emergent entity, perhaps the universe's most complex emergent function.”
― Carl Safina, Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe

“At present, I allow, we must have forest for the atmosphere. Presently we find a chemical substitute. And then, why any natural trees? I foresee nothing but the art tree all over the earth. In fact, we clean the planet."

"Do you mean," put in a man called Gould, "that we are to have no vegetation at all?"

"Exactly. You shave your face: even, in the English fashion, you shave him every day. One day we shave the planet."

"I wonder what the birds will make of it?"

"I would not have any birds either. On the art tree I would have the art birds all singing when you press a switch inside the house. When you are tired of the singing you switch them off. Consider again the improvement. No feathers dropped about, no nests, no eggs, no dirt."

"It sounds," said Mark, "like abolishing pretty well all organic life."

"And why not? It is simple hygiene. Listen, my friends. If you pick up some rotten thing and find this organic life crawling over it, do you not say, 'Oh, the horrid thing. It is alive,' and then drop it?”
― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

“By being aware of our place and role in the ecosystem, we preserve it.”
― Bill François, Eloquence of the Sardine: Extraordinary Encounters Beneath the Sea

“Even before humanity realized the earth spins on its axis, they had understood that the sea belongs to everyone”
― Bill François, Eloquence of the Sardine: Extraordinary Encounters Beneath the Sea

“Back to earth, to plants, to air
flow the tiny particles
that were once a fox.”
― Isabel Thomas, Fox: A Circle of Life Story

“The world began without man and will end without him”
― Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques

“Humankind needs to be more kind. Its kind won't be here forever and the concept of forever too is its own invention.”
― Kushal Poddar, Poet