William McDonough Quotes

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

We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.

I'm doing it with a rock format and the words are about people living in harmony with Mother Earth. It's very important to me - and I feel it should be for every living human on this planet.

I think we need to take responsibility for the things we put on this planet, and also take responsibility for the things we take off the planet. We need to have limiters on how far we allow ourselves to go - ethical, moral limiters.

If you don't have an ethic of conservation, you basically have a license to drive a Hummer through the Amazon.

I'd like to think that the actions we take today will allow others in the future to discover the wonders of landscapes we helped protect but never had the chance to enjoy ourselves.

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

Man’s usurpation over nature is an egotism that will destroy human as well as whale kingdoms. … Academies should return to wisdom study in tree groves rather than robot study in plastic cells

It is possible, I think, to say that... a Christian agriculture [is] formed upon the understanding that it is sinful for people to misuse or destroy what they did not make. The Creation is a unique, irreplaceable gift, therefore to be used with humility, respect, and skill.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

We should honor Mother Earth with gratitude; otherwise our spirituality may become hypocritical.

Humans merely share the earth. We can only protect the land, not own it.

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.

We are evolutionary descendents of this marvellous panoply of life. And what that says unequivocally is we have an utter total obligation to make sure we have an environment that not only is good for us but is good for all living organisms.

The principles that will save Earth's life are the same principles that save the living souls of humans: ineluctable spiritual principles.

The reason that I keep writing is that all my most powerful messages about the fates of wild places that I care about need to have words as well as images.

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

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

In time, we will have to recognise that it is not 'nature' that we need to protect, but ourselves, and we can only do this by abandoning the old, grandiose, profit-seeking schemes so beloved of our masters and learning to till the soil, live to scale, and live within our means.

Instead of passing on choppy waters to the next generation, we should endeavor to leave them a calmer sea.

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

In a fragile environment, we need to be aware of ourselves as members of a uniquely powerful species living among other species who are quite as interesting as we are but vulnerable to us because we are cleverer in more destructive ways.

If the world is presented as resources to be exploited, then, more than likely, you're going to exploit the world.

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

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