Murray Bookchin Quotes

Nature has an economy, an elegance, a style, that if we could but emulate it we could rise out of the rubble we are making out of the planet

There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself.

Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it's made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it.

Some recent occurrences such as the BSE disaster and even perhaps - dare I mention it - the present severe weather conditions in our country are, I have no doubt, the consequences of mankind's arrogant disregard of the delicate balance of nature. We have to find a way of ensuring that our remarkable and seemingly beneficial advances in technology do not just become the agents of our own destruction.

We humans still have a long way to go with learning to live harmoniously with our environment and its wildlife.

Nature's not our enemy, it's our sustenance; and we need it - and we need nature healthy for us to be healthy and to survive long term

Crucially we haven't been figuring out how to live in oneness, with the Earth & every other living thing; we have just been insanely trying to figure out how to live with each other, billions of each other, only we're not living with each other our crazy selves are living with each other, and perpetuating an epidemic of disconnection.

Intelligence is the ability of a species to live in harmony with its environment.

As long as we are graceful, appreciative lodgers, the earth remains healthy and wondrous.

Now he began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth...but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.

The wind is not helpless for any man's need, Nor falleth the rain but for thistle and weed.

If man ever comes to perfect equilibrium with the environment, we'll all be redundant, perhaps because you won't need art or letters.

The prevailing attitude towards nature is that form of heresy which denies substance and, in doing so, denies the rightfulness of creation. We have said - to the point of repletion, perhaps - that man is not to take his patterns from nature; but neither is he to waste himself in seeking to change her face.

The end of nature sours all my material pleasures. The prospect of living in a genetically engineered world sickens me. And yet it is toward such a world that our belief in endless material advancement hurries us. As long as that desire drives us, here is no way to set limits.

Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism.

Those trees are your lungs. The earth recycles as your body. The rivers recycle as your circulation. The air is your breath. So what do we call the environment?

In the future, will our technologies help stabilise or planet and population, leading to a very long lifetime for us? Or will we destroy our world and its inhabitants, after only a brief appearance on the cosmic stage?

I realized that the future of aviation, to which I had devoted so much of my life, depended less on the perfection of aircraft than on preserving the epoch-evolved environment of life, and that this was true of all technological progress.

The only sustainable city - and this, to me, is the indispensable ideal and goal - is a city in balance with its countryside.

Our Western science, ever since the 17th century, has been obsessed with the notion of control, of man dominating nature. This obsession has led to disaster.

Everything is connected to everything else. Everything must go somewhere. Nature knows best. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

...recognize and respect Earth's beautiful systems of balance, between the presence of animals on land, the fish in the sea, birds in the air, mankind, water, air, and land. Most importantly there must always be awareness of the actions by people that can disturb this precious balance.

Nature is very clear on this. In fact, there's one fundamental law that all of nature obeys that mankind breaks everyday. Now this is a law that's evolved over billions of years and the law is this: nothing in nature takes more than it needs. A redwood tree doesn't take all of the soil's nutrients, just what it needs to grow. A lion doesn't kill every gazelle, just one. We have a term for something in the body when it takes more than its share. We call it cancer.

It must be acknowledged that an increasing proportion of the world's population is living in cities, in almost completely human-made environments. But we should also acknowledge that there are still a considerable number of people who wish to live in harmony with nature, and that globalization has made their ways of life increasing difficult to sustain.

Never again will we have this good a chance as we now have to find an enduring place for ourselves within the natural systems that keep us alive. It's a sweet spot in history. That's why this is such a critical time.