Best 70 Environment Quotes About Protecting The Environment

After witnessing the catastrophic sequences of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson came up with an idea for a national day to focus on the environment. Drawing inspiration by the student anti-war movement, he came to the realization that the protection of nature could be introduced to the political agenda of the United States if that social power was combined with public consciousness about environmental pollution.
Celebrating Earth Day is a chance to remember what several famous people said about the environment and the notion of a sustainable life. This collection of environmental quotes helps us realize that human activity can’t be disrespectful towards the planet we live in. These words might be the sparks that will ignite a global movement to help keep Earth safe, forever.

Table of Contents

1. Save The Environment Quotes
2. Environment Protection Quotes
3. Quotes About Human Impact On Environment
4. World Environment Day Quotes

Save The Environment Quotes

• In nature’s economy the currency is not money, it is life. Vandana Shiva
• We are the last generation with a real opportunity to save the world. Laurence Overmire
• Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life. George Monbiot
• We are seeds as well as parasites to the earth. We can either give or take, depending on our perception of growth. Zephyr McIntyre
• Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed. Mahatma Gandhi
• What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on? Henry David Thoreau
• A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people. Franklin D. Roosevelt
• There is something fundamentally wrong in treating the Earth as if it were a business in liquidation. Herman E. Daly

• If civilization is to survive, it must live on the interest, not the capital, of nature. Ronald Wright
• Environment is no one’s property to destroy; it’s everyone’s responsibility to protect. Mohith Agadi
• Environment isn’t asking us to conserve her for her but for our future generations. Mohith Agadi
• The environment you live in can suddenly change! Are you ready for this? Mehmet Murat ildan
• We’re in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone is arguing over where they’re going to sit. David Suzuki
• It seems madness to think that a society would rate marginal economic growth above a livable earth, but there you are. Bill Bryson
• We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings. Albert Einstein
• We shall never understand the natural environment until we see it as a living organism. Today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see and nobody calls the cops. Paul Brooks
• Environmental pollution is not only humanity’s treason to humanity but also a treason to all other living creatures on earth! Mehmet Murat ildan
• When the last tree is cut and the last fish killed, the last river poisoned, then you will see that you can’t eat money. John May
• To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed. Theodore Roosevelt

• It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. Ansel Adams
• For if we destroy creation, creation will destroy us. Pope Francis
• God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation. Sir Francis Bacon
• Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance. Theodore Roosevelt
• Overall, becoming a carbon-neutral country would involve changes in our behaviour, but these are modest compared with the changes that will be forced upon us if we do nothing. Caroline Lucas
• Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal? Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
• The earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations. Pope John Paul II
• The global economy is a doomsday machine that must be stopped and reprogrammed. Kalle Lasn
• People would rather believe than know. Edward O. Wilson
• He that plants trees loves others besides himself. Thomas Fuller
• We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment. Margaret Mead
• Our planet’s alarm is going off, and it is time to wake up and take action! Leonardo DiCaprio
• I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness. Aldo Leopold
• here is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend that it’s not really there. Bill McKibben, The End of Nature

Environment Protection Quotes

• Any serious social, political, and economic change must include veganism. Gary L. Francione
• Having an energy conversation without talking about climate is like talking about smoking and not talking about cancer. Chris Hayes
• The truth is: the natural world is changing. And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to defend it. Sir David Attenborough
• We are such spendthrifts with our lives, the trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out. Paul Newman
• So we are left with a stark choice: allow climate disruption to change everything about our world, or change pretty much everything about our economy to avoid that fate. But we need to be very clear: because of our decades of collective denial, no gradual, incremental options are now available to us. Naomi Klein
• Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature. Naomi Klein
• All must pay the debt of nature. Annie Proulx

• Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead
• If your house is on fire, you don’t comfort yourself with the thought that houses have been catching fire for thousands of years. You don’t sit idly back and think, “Oh well, that is the way of nature.” You get going, immediately. And you don’t spring into action because of an idealistic notion that houses deserve to be saved. You do it because if you don’t, you won’t have a place to live. Bill Nye
• The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved. Richard Rogers
• Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed … We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water
• We ourselves (one single species) have taken over vast tracts of the inhabitable surface of the planet. Surely, we should allow those other creatures we share the planet with to retain some part of their ancient heritage. David Attenborough

Quotes About Human Impact On Environment

• Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates. Vandana Shiva
• What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another. Chris Maser
• Climate change is not just a problem for the future. It is impacting us every day, everywhere. Vandana Shiva
• If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live. Maurice Maeterlinck
• People ‘over-produce’ pollution because they are not paying for the costs of dealing with it. Ha-Joon Chang
• To restore stability to our planet, therefore, we must restore its biodiversity, the very thing we have removed. It is the only way out of this crisis that we ourselves have created. We must rewild the world! David Attenborough
• If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos. E. O. Wilson
• I think we’re lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse. David Attenborough

World Environment Day Quotes

• Men argue. Nature acts. Voltaire
• Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries. Jimmy Carter
• Humanity is a biological species, living in a biological environment, because like all species, we are exquisitely adapted in everything: from our behavior, to our genetics, to our physiology, to that particular environment in which we live. The earth is our home. Unless we preserve the rest of life, as a sacred duty, we will be endangering ourselves by destroying the home in which we evolved, and on which we completely depend. Edward O. Wilson
• The race is now on between the technoscientific and scientific forces that are destroying the living environment and those that can be harnessed to save it. . . . If the race is won, humanity can emerge in far better condition than when it entered, and with most of the diversity of life still intact. Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life
• Those least responsible for climate change are worst affected by it. Vandana Shiva
• The Earth is what we all have in common. Wendell Berry
• You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you. Vandana Shiva
• 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. Theodore Roosevelt
• One of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe threats of global warming is that 40 percent of the US population does not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades. About the same percentage believe that the world was created a few thousand years ago. If science conflicts with the Bible, so much the worse for science. It would be hard to find an analogue in other societies. Noam Chomsky
• A tree is alive, and thus it is always more than you can see. Roots to leaves, yes-those you can, in part, see. But it is more-it is the lichens and moss and ferns that grow on its bark, the life too small to see that lives among its roots, a community we know of, but do not think on. It is every fly and bee and beetle that uses it for shelter or food, every bird that nests in its branches. Every one an individual, and yet every one part of the tree, and the tree part of every one. Elizabeth Moon
• This readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs—whatever—just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game’s outcome. Slavoj Žižek
• One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery. Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water

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