The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.
Gun violence is real. People don't come back.
Errors in decision-making lead young people to under-save for retirement, doctors to miss tumours, CEOs to make catastrophic investments, governments to engage in needless wars, and parents to irreversibly traumatize their children.
Even now with the operation, with the damage done, my ankle probably is never going to be back to 100 per cent.
Trust takes one second to lose and a lifetime to rebuild.
If we're damaged it will take 20 years to fix ourselves. It only takes one year to cause 20 years of damage.
We batter this planet as if we had someplace else to go.
The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of stories, you might still be alive when you hit bottom.
But souls can't be sold. They can only be lost and never found again.
Shame on us if 100 years from now our grandchildren are living on a planet that has been irreparably damaged by Global Warming, and they ask, 'How could those who came before us, who saw this coming, have let this happen?'
What I worry about is climate change, because that would have untold effects that we can't even measure yet.
If we don't go far enough fast enough, the damage we inflict could take centuries to undo - if it can be undone at all.
When you get hit in the head, you don't recover from that.
Mental stains can not be removed by time, nor washed away by any waters. [Lat., Animi labes nec diuturnitate vanescere nec omnibus ullis elui potest.]
The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
While our budget shortfall is temporary, ruining pristine national lands is permanent.
Child, that is why all the rest are now a horror to her. That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. Oh, the fruit is good, but they loath it ever after.
Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity.
The retreat and disappearance of glaciers—there are only 160,000 left—means we're burning libraries and damaging the planet, possibly beyond repair. Bit by bit, glacier by glacier, rib by rib, we're living the Fall.
Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later, he will regret not having left it intact.
If character be irrecoverably lost, then indeed there will be nothing left worth saving.
The Kyoto Treaty wasn't perfect, but we signed it, in fact, helped to draft it. And I'm very proud of it, it was the world's first commitment to doing something comprehensive on greenhouse gases and trying to reduce global warming before we do irreversible damage to many civilizations around the world.
We're going to lose more species, acidify the oceans more, do damage that it will take millions of years - if not longer - to unwind. Exactly how much damage will we do? How deep will those scars run? We don't know yet. But we will turn the ship.
Ill-digested principles are, if anything, worse than ill-digested food, for the latter harms the body and there is cure for it, whereas the former ruins the soul and there is no cure for it.
There are risks which are not acceptable: the destruction of humanity is one of them.
