Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

Think globally, act locally": "Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature.

We are all environmentalists now, but we are not all planetists. An environmentalist realizes that nature has its pleasures and deserves respect. A planetist puts the earth ahead of the earthlings.

Learn how to separate the majors and the minors. A lot of people don't do well simply because they major in minor things.

I don't have time to think about the false controversy.

I don't collect anything. I collect people, I think. I'm very social and I like seeing a lot of people.

Be civil to all; serviceable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.

We live, understandably enough, with the sense of urgency; our clock, like Baudelaire's, has had the hands removed and bears the legend, "It is later than you think." But with us it is always a little too late for mind, yet never too late for honest stupidity; always a little too late for understanding, never too late for righteous, bewildered wrath; always too late for thought, never too late for naïve moralizing. We seem to like to condemn our finest but not our worst qualities by pitting them against the exigency of time.

If you don't believe that the world has a heart, then you won't hear it beating, you won't think it's alive and you won't consider what you're doing to it.

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.

There are a helluva lot more of us who care about our environment in the world than we realize. We're the majority, and we can do something about that

If we continue to think of ourselves mostly as consumers, it's going to be very hard to bring our environmental troubles under control. But it's also going to be very hard to live the rounded and joyful lives that could be ours. This is a subversive volume in all the best ways!

That earliest shock in one's life which occurs to all of us; which first makes us think.

I think every single American believes they have a right to clean air and clean water.

Growing up I had a real disconnect with the planet.

I just love thinking about what makes people tick

We put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking.

If the earth is man's extended body, to be loved and respected as one's own body, those who do no greening of themselves will hardly bring about the greening of America. The idea of 'greening' involves color, flowering, freshness of spring, and, above all, respect for what is organic and vegetative as distinct from the mechanical and metallic.

There's a rule, I think. You get what you want in life, but not your second choice too.

Obviously, when I learn about something new that I can do in my everyday life that makes a whole lot of sense and can help the environment, I do it. Eventually, it just becomes second nature. If we all begin to learn from one another and share some of the things we do, we just might be able to affect the world for the better through these little rituals. In a curious way, this would be a great wave of awareness: doing the right thing without being told to or having to think why.

I became an actor at a very young age, but I also had a deep respect for nature and I think I was sort of a little biologist when I was younger. I watched documentaries on rainforest pollution and the loss of species and habitats for animals around the world. It affected me in a very hardcore, emotional way when I was younger. So, later in life I wanted to continue that path more and investigate and learn more about ecological issues.

All I can say is what I've always said: If you break your leg, stop thinking about dancing and start decorating the cast.

I think a lot of people in my circle are thinking that way or see the movie [Into the Forest] and then really think that way. I think it's hopefully tapping into sort of a consciousness right now in regards to our society's relationship with the environment and our own and our disconnect from it, myself included.

Conversation with a friend will only bear good fruit of knowledge when both think only of the matter under consideration and forget that they are friends.

All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think.

Many conservatives, I think, see action on climate change as really an attack on a way of life. That's really a hard pill to swallow, that the whole way that I have created my life is wrong, you're saying, that I shouldn't have this house in the suburb, I shouldn't be driving this car.