Edith Widder Quotes

Can we afford clean water? Can we afford rivers and lakes and streams and oceans which continue to make possible life on this planet? Can we afford life itself? Those questions were never asked as we destroyed the waters of our nation, and they deserve no answers as we finally move to restore and renew them. These questions answer themselves.

Only one of the many life support systems on which we depend - soils, aquifers, rainfall, ice, the pattern of winds and currents, pollinators, biological abundance and diversity - need fail for everything to slide.

Don't go to the doctor with every distemper, nor to the lawyer with every quarrel, nor to the pot for every thirst.

Out of the long list of nature’s gifts to man, none is perhaps so utterly essential to human life as soil.

a technician who uses the term “glitch” is like a Doctor who tells you you’re suffering from a “thingy,” except the doctor won’t tell you to go home and try turning yourself on and off again.

The more widely you can spread this notion of achieving ROI by preserving and improving ecosystems, the better.

For ISIS, the answer is to cut off their food, their water, their armaments, you know, and their funding. I don't mean literally their food and water. What I mean is cutting off their life support system.

There are ecosystems like coral reefs [at risk] through ocean acidification. Those are valuable things that we should protect.

What would human life be without forests, those natural cities?

Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come... Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own - indeed, to embrace the whole of creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder.

Life in the ocean makes Earth hospitable. We are sailing along in the universe and we have a blue engine that is making everything alright.

Ecology is often confused with environmentalism, while in fact, environmentalism often leaves out the fact that people, too, can be a legitimate part of an ecosystem.

It is now well understood that humans ultimately depend on the health of the planet for their wellbeing.

Doctor Who has never pretended to be hard science fiction... At best Doctor Who is a fairytale, with fairytale logic about this wonderful man in this big blue box who at the beginning of every story lands somewhere where there is a problem...

There aren't enough professionals to solve the world's problems. There will never be enough doctors to solve the health problems of the world. There will never be enough teachers to solve the education problems of the world - illiteracy. There will never be enough missionaries to care and comfort and share the Good News. It has to be done by normal, ordinary people.

If something's going wrong with this planet we'd better fix it here and not look for some sort of escape.

My travels through physics really are the same urges that make me travel through ecology. They are not really different, except that there is an added dimension of seeing ecological destruction and seeing the very life-support system that makes us survive on this planet being destroyed. That makes me do more than just inquire; it compels me to act and to intervene.

The road to conservation is paved with good intentions that often prove futile, or even dangerous, due to a lack of understanding of either land or economic land use.

We have a responsibility toward the other life-forms of our planet whose continued existence is threatened by the thoughtless behavior of our own human species. . . . Environmental responsibility – for if there is no God, then, obviously, it is up to us to put things right.

I would remind people on the planet that this is the only one we have, and we need to take care of it. I would want people to truly consider what we do and how we treat the earth, the ecosystems, and animals we share it with, and think about the legacy we want to leave behind.

Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do. Go through his clothes and look for loose change.

You should know what is taken out of the ecosystem in order to give you a moment's sustenance.

We live in a world where virtually everybody expects there's going to be some reasonable therapy for virtually any situation.

I have always disliked the idea of an arts ghetto in which poetry is kept on a life-support system.