Every Day is Earth Day!

In lieu of today being the Official Earth Day, I have collected some of my very favorite nature/environment/tree-hugger quotes.

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money. ~Cree Indian Proverb (This was my fav in late elementary school! I had a rad shirt with this quote on the back...)

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. ~William Shakespeare

You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet. ~Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons, 1964

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.
~George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Environmentalists have long been fond of saying that the sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away. ~Stephanie Mills, ed., In Praise of Nature, 1990 (Yes, that's right, I do not support nuclear energy--however much more recent "environmentalists" have touted it as a possible alternative to fossil fuels.)

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. ~John Muir (One of my Very Very Very Favorites!! From one of my Very Very Very Favorite pioneers of environmentalism!)

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~Chief Seattle, 1855

A living planet is a much more complex metaphor for deity than just a bigger father with a bigger fist. If an omniscient, all-powerful Dad ignores your prayers, it's taken personally. Hear only silence long enough, and you start wondering about his power. His fairness. His very existence. But if a world mother doesn't reply, Her excuse is simple. She never claimed conceited omnipotence. She has countless others clinging to her apron strings, including myriad species unable to speak for themselves. To Her elder offspring She says - go raid the fridge. Go play outside. Go get a job. Or, better yet, lend me a hand. I have no time for idle whining. ~David Brin

I conceive that the land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are still unborn. ~A Chieftan from Nigeria

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. ~Native American Proverb

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew. ~Marshall McLuhan, 1964

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. ~Henry David Thoreau

There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all. ~Robert Orben

I'm not an environmentalist. I'm an Earth warrior. ~Darryl Cherney, quoted in Smithsonian, April 1990

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them. ~Bill Vaughn, quoted in Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon, 1987

For 200 years we've been conquering Nature. Now we're beating it to death. ~Tom McMillan, quoted in Francesca Lyman, The Greenhouse Trap, 1990

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. ~John Muir, 1913, in L.M. Wolfe, ed., John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, 1938

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. ~Elwyn Brooks White, Essays of E.B. White, 1977

Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imagining ourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature. We're not the brain, we are a cancer on nature. ~Dave Foreman (Pretty controversial man--founder of Earth First! A model misanthrope)

Every Day is Earth Day! ~Author Unknown