Joseph Wood Krutch Quotes

A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.

The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it..

As an environmental scientist, I think our first need is to feed and shelter and nurture. That has always required the exploitation of plant life, and it always will.

We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.

I maintain that if there is such a thing as a true and honest environmentalist, it's people like Slim and hopefully me, who have been caretakers of the land all our lives, along with the generations before us.

Sooner or later, we will have to recognise that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.

Earth was not built to serve the needs of humans.

In many developing countries environmental problems are relegated to the periphery because they do not appear to be as urgent as other issues … We cannot survive without clean drinking water, food and pure air. Environmental concerns are not a luxury in Africa.

Unless we connect directly with the earth, we will not have the faintest clue why we should save it…. Only if we understand the beauty of nature will we love it, and only if we become alerted to learn about the planet's disease processes can we decide to live our lives with a proper sense of ecological responsibility.

Ecology has become the political substitute for the word "motherhood.

In the long term the economy and the environment are the same thing. If it is unenvironmental it is uneconomical. That is a rule of nature.

Humanity is consuming the resources of the earth and life in an excessive and disordered way, forgetting the earth's own needs

Our conservation laws are based on static ideas about nature—not landscapes that are rapidly changing because of something humans did.

I never lose an opportunity to speak about my obsession: humankind and the environment.

Try to leave the Earth a better place than when you arrived.

For how many people do you think might yet stand on this planet before the sun grows cold? That's the responsibility we hold in our hands.

After all, sustainability means running the global environment - Earth Inc. - like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital.

Journey with me to a true commitment to our environment. Journey with me to the serenity of leaving to our children a planet in equilibrium.

Unless we keep this planet healthy, everything else is for naught.

The Earth does not belong to us: we belong to the Earth.

Each generation takes the earth as trustees. We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.

Raising awareness on the most pressing environmental issues of our time is more important than ever.

Environmentalism is a way of seeing our place within the biosphere.

The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them.

Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.