Don McLean Quotes

They were all too tightly bound together, men and women, creatures wild and tame, flowers, fruits and leaves, to ask that any one be spared. As long as the whole continued, the earth could go about its business.

We are all part of the ecosystem.

All life is part of a complex relationship in which each is dependent upon the others, taking from, giving to and living with all the rest.

We human beings are not only the beneficiaries but also the stewards of other creatures. Thanks to our bodies, God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel the desertification of the soil almost as a physical ailment, and the extinction of a species as a painful disfigurement. Let us not leave in our wake a swatch of destruction and death which will affect our own lives and those of future generations.

All life is a movement in relationship. There is no living thing on earth which is not related to something or other.

Twenty-three stories up and all I could see out the windows was grey smog. They could call it the City of the Angels if they wanted to, but if there were angels out there, they had to be flying blind.

What I have experienced over time is that environmental problems are easier to deal with in ways that don't go into their interconnections to the rest of what we are.

God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the seas…. God said “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”

The new American finds his challenge and his love in the traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the townlets wither a time and die. This is not offered in criticism but only as observation. And I am sure that, as all pendulums reverse their swing, so eventually will the swollen cities rupture like dehiscent wombs and disperse their children back to the countryside.

St. Louis sprawls where mighty rivers meet - as broad as Philadelphia, but three stories high instead of two, with wider streets and dirtier atmosphere, over the dull-brown of wide, calm rivers. The city overflows into the valleys of Illinois and lies there, writhing under its grimy cloud.

Nature was developed to resist the onslaughts of capitalism, but it's really not a very good defense - rather like resisting a steamroller with a Christmas tree ornament.

We need a philosophy for humans and nature to live together.

The earth is one big interconnected entity. If you hurt a piece, you hurt the whole. If you hurt the people, you hurt the environment.

One time, I threw a candy wrapper on the street. I was with a friend who said to me, You just littered on the street! Don't you care about the environment? And I thought about it, and I said, You know what? This isn't the environment. This is New York City. New York City is not the environment. New York City is a giant piece of litter. Next to Mexico City, it's the shittiest piece of litter in the world. Just a pussy, runny, smokin', stinkin' piece of litter.

Nature compels us to recognize the fact of mutual dependence, each life necessarily helping the other lives who are linked to it. In the very fibers of our being, we bear within ourselves the fact of the solidarity of life.

All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth, befalls the children of the Earth.

We are all an integral part of the chain of life.

The whites, too, shall pass - perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.

Oh well, maybe the only beauty left in cities is in the oil slicks on the road and maybe there isn't any beauty left in the people who live in these places.

To be modern is to destroy nature.

You have to understand that it's a very cooperative world, not only with the environment, with but our fellow human beings. If you do not cooperate, if you do not work together to keep the entire organism going, the whole thing dies, and everybody dies with it. That's a law of nature, and it's existed forever. We're one of the very few creatures that has a choice, and can intellectualize the process.

The human family has invaluable friends and irreplaceable allies in the plant and animal worlds. We cannot continue to tug at the web of life without tearing a hole in the very fabric of our earthly existence - and eventually falling through that hole ourselves.

American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash--all of them--surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered in rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use.

Everything here is alive thanks to the living of everything else.

There is no differentiation between all living things: trees, river, animals, and humans. We are all one interdependent organism, so our focus may seem broad but each element interacts with the other. We have so many phenomenal eyes, skills, and hands on deck. It's mind-blowingly exciting.