Gro Harlem Brundtland Quotes

We must follow the wisdom of the Brundtland Report. We must pursue development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

We need to have a vision of the world we want to create so that we can see ourselves as collaborators with future generations in the project of shaping it.

Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us to restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wildlife and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.

If we do not make tough decisions now, future Americans will have to make even tougher ones.

Governance has been at the heart of the work of the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations and is a clear focus in its report, 'Now for the Long Term.'

Kiwis must not fall behind the standards of other countries. We pride ourselves on our quality of life. Thus we must pave the road in the right way for the future generations.

People really are very concerned when they put their head on the pillow at night - they're concerned that America may cease to be what America has been because we are leveraging the future of our children and our grandchildren.

The need to incorporate longer term time scales into our societal choices is very real—and right in the lap of our generation.

Sustainable development: Meeting present needs without compromising the stock of natural resources remaining for future generations. In terms of buildings, it implies resource efficiency, minimum energy use, flexibility and long life

What sort of world can we prepare for our great grandchildren?

I plant a lot of trees. I am a great believer in planting things for future generations. I loathe the now culture where you just live for today.

If more politicians in this country were thinking about the next generation instead of the next election, it might be better for the United States and the world.

As founder and co-chair of the upper Mississippi River Congressional task force, I have long sought to preserve the river's health and historical multiple uses, including as a natural waterway and a home to wildlife, for the benefit of future generations of Americans.

Corporate responsibility extends not only to the customers, the resources and the workers of the present, but also to those of the future.

If you don't focus on the future generation, it means you are destroying your country.

With the continued support of citizens who refuse to accept inaction at the expense of future generations, we will lead the world toward a sustainable future.

We have to preserve it and use it sustainably. And the short-term use of resources at the destruction of the long-term heritage of this country is not a policy that we can pursue.

The only thing that can save us as a species is seeing how we're not thinking about future generations in the way we live.

For an economy built to last we must invest in what will fuel us for generations to come. This is our history - from the Transcontinental Railroad to the Hoover Dam, to the dredging of our ports and building of our most historic bridges - our American ancestors prioritized growth and investment in our nation's infrastructure.

We are too quickly losing important landscapes in this country to development - and I worry that if we do not act to protect them now, future generations will grow up in a profoundly different world.

We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value.

We shall have to fight the politician who remembers only that the unborn have no votes and that since posterity has done nothing for us we need do nothing for posterity.

How much longer, for instance, can we continue to crowd more and more people into this world? …. How long can we permit the uncontrolled use of the earth's resources when there is no possibility of replacing them? Indeed, how long will it be before we have completely used up everything our lives depend on? These issues are the politics of the future. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have begun to spell out in substantive fashion the means by which we can control population growth, environmental problems, and the conservation of our natural resources.

Governments, however, must think not only of the present, but of the rights of future generations.