Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Anything to do with the land, I love.

When we conduct agriculture, we are, therefore, altering the ecological arrangement that was responsible for our genesis as a species. I think that this is the reason that this alienation has allowed us to see and regard land mostly as a resource. So we have created a problem for ourselves from the word "go," for land is not a resource any more than humans are resources.

Do you know how much land is under ice, rock and snow? Do you know why 90 percent of us live within 100 kilometres of the U.S. border? We have this idea we're a vast country. But the reality is that a lot of it, a huge amount, is uninhabitable.

In a world of growing food demand, Africa is home to two-thirds of the world's unexploited arable land.

I grew up in a family of peasants, and it was there that I saw the way that, for example, our wheat fields suffered as a result of dust storms, water erosion and wind erosion; I saw the effect of that on life - on human life.

The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.

Building houses and mansion ranching is not ranching.

I sincerely believe that there's room for cutting down trees for forestry and grazing, so as we all get to eat. Everyone has to compromise.

Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe. There's no place that we know about that can support life as we know it, not even our sister planet, Mars, where we might set up housekeeping someday, but at great effort and trouble we have to recreate the things we take for granted here.

It results from our having such quantities of land to waste as we please. In Europe the object is to make the most of their land, labour being abundant: here it is to make the most of our labour, land being abundant

Farmers are farmers in the first place because they have the deep-seated instinct to raise crops, not to cut them back, not to leave the land unproductive.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.

Population must increase rapidly, more rapidly than in former times, and ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil.

Pasture comes before prayer.

Cattle, horses, mules, asses... may be pastured on this land or place which is public property of the Roman people, … nor need anyone be charged tax or rental for this privilege.

That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics..

Land is the productivity of our country.

Land is not merely soil.

If a man farms his land to the waste of the soil or the tress, he destroys not only his own assets but Nature's assets.

It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.

Land use is becoming more and more a general national interest and should be as much a study in the cities as in the country. For with the proper use of land, many of our greatest troubles—dust storms, floods, over-production of this and that, would at least be measurably controlled.

Some environmentalists demands are counter productive. Avoiding pesticides for example means farming more land less efficiently, which leads to higher prices, more hunger, more disease …, and less biodiversity.

Nationalization of Land

Attention! Land Thieves and Natural Resources Grabbers …. Under [Theodore] Roosevelt any doubt about the power of the Chief Executive to make withdrawals of public land was resolved in favor of the people.

We imagine going to the moon and planting a flag, going to an asteroid and mining, going to Mars and setting up a colony. And I think that expansionist mentality is very self-destructive, especially given the kind of precarious relationship we now have to the ecosystem here on Earth, because it allows us to imagine that Earth is disposable.