Paul Tsongas Quotes

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

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

We owe it to each other - and to our children and grandchildren - to leave our planet in a better state than when we found it.

On Earth Day, we celebrate all the gifts the world and nature make available to us. We recognize our complete dependence on its bounty. And we acknowledge the need for good stewardship to preserve its fruits for future generations.

Hopefully, generations after us will continue to protect, preserve, and look after this wonderful land.

We always have to remind ourselves of how fragile life on this planet is and what responsibilities we have.

I care about this beautiful planet that we all share. This is a home that we have to leave in good shape for the next generations.

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.

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

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

How much will you give for the lives of your childrens children, which is yourself? How much are people willing to give up for air, earth, water, animals, and the coming generations? I think the answer to that is pretty clear.

We're busily wrecking the chances for future generations at a rapid rate of knots by not recognizing the damage we're doing to the natural environment, bearing in mind that this is the only planet that we know has any life on it.

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

I can't think of anything more important than the environment we leave to our children and our children's children.

This isn't just about today, this about generations to come. And you've got a chance to be the greatest conservation President since Theodore Roosevelt, and I think he's done it.

Through no divine design or cosmic plan, we have inherited the mantle of life's caretaker on the earth, the only home we have ever known.

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.

If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it.

Our challenge for the future is that we realize we are very much a part of the earth's ecosystem, and we must learn to respect and live according to the basic biological laws of nature.

We the undersigned, senior members of the world's scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.

We are going to learn how to relate to the Earth and our own natural environment here by looking seriously at space colony ecologies.

We need to put our priority on protecting this exceptional way of life.

If we hand over a planet with an uncertain future, history will not forgive us.

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