Andrew Motion Quotes

The further human society drifts away from nature, the less we understand interdependence.

I had in mind a message, although I hope it doesn't intrude too badly, persuading Americans, and especially Southerners, of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife.

Earth was not built to serve the needs of humans.

Nature is simply the environment on earth in which man finds himself, and to treat it as a separate being in the image of man is sheer nonsense.

It saddens me that in the 21st century, with all our knowledge and power, we are hearing more and more stories of possible extinctions due to people's choice. We are responsible for our choices and the only ones capable of changing our future.

The environment, what surrounds you, is so alive and delightful and complex.

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

The images of Earth's delicate biosphere, contrasting with the sterile moonscape where the astronauts left their footsteps, have become iconic for environmentalists: these may indeed be the Apollo programme's most enduring legacy.

If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.

Genetic design is something we can use to fight the lack of sustainability we humans are forcing on the earth's environment.

Right now, we don't have a very good relation with creation.

We owe it to our children to be better stewards of the environment. The alternative? - a world without whales. It's too terrible to imagine.

Over the long haul of life on this planet, it is the ecologists, and not the bookkeepers of business, who are the ultimate accountants.

Politicians need a better understanding of global ecology. We need to be freed from our species-specific arrogance. No evidence exists that we are 'chosen', the unique species for which all the others were made. Nor are we the most important one because we are so numerous, powerful and dangerous.

Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble.

I do see a lot of the hard end of ecology, and my feeling is that we live on a super-exciting planet but a super-fragile one.

Now, more than ever, we need nature as a balancing agent.

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future.

The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture.

I take a biocentric point of view. I look at things from the point of view of the Earth and the laws of ecology. As opposed to the anthropocentric point of view, where everything revolves around humanity.

It's nice to think about having everything natural and similar to pre-Columbian times.... In fact, man himself has long been part of that environment and there is no way to separate him from that environment.

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

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.”

True conservation means protecting the entire habitat.

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