Quotes Temple Environmental Quotes

By polluting clear water with slime you will never find good drinking water.

Aeschylus
Greek Poet

Complexity is one of the great problems in environmental design.

Christopher Alexander
American Architect

Address these environmental issues and you will address every issue known to man. And we keep dabbling in things that aren't really that important in the long term.

Ted Danson
American Actor

The environmental movement, like all political processes, reacts best to disasters. But these are very slow, very gradual disasters in the making.

Ted Danson
American Actor

We have a project with Unocal here in Los Angeles, where we as an environmental organization, the oil company, and the state all get together to promote the recycling of used motor oil.

Ted Danson
American Actor

We're not trying to reinvent the wheel; for any environmental organization to claim sole responsibility for any kind of victory is insane, because everybody attacks these problems as a group.

Ted Danson
American Actor

Of the 55 refineries closed in America in the last 10 years, they were all closed for economic reasons, mostly oil company mergers. Not a single one was closed for environmental purposes or objections.

Peter DeFazio
American Politician

I align myself with almost all researchers in assuming that anything we do is a composite of whatever genetic limitations were given to us by our parents and whatever kinds of environmental opportunities are available.

Howard Gardner
American Psychologist

And I know that the younger generation is doing things that are so ingenious. And for them it's not a matter of a political belief or an environmental stance. It's really just common sense.

Daryl Hannah
American Actress

In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.

Garrett Hardin
American Environmentalist

Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce; it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies.

Garrett Hardin
American Environmentalist

No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.

Garrett Hardin
American Environmentalist

Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.

Garrett Hardin
American Environmentalist

I reflect back 35 years ago, and look how far we have come in America with our environmental policy to improve the conditions of our air and water, and we have had some real successes.

Jay Inslee
American Politician

We had some major successes and we did so because the country embraced the spirit of Earth Day and embraced this concept that we have to have forward-looking, visionary environmental policy and energy policy in this country.

Jay Inslee
American Politician

Since the day he came into office, President Bush has worked to gut more than 34 years of hard work by weakening many of our Nation's standing environmental laws, some of which were signed into law by his father.

Jim Jeffords
American Politician

My efforts in Congress are guided by the belief that environmental preservation and restoration are a critical part of the legacy we leave to future generations.

Sue Kelly
American Politician

Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio.

Thomas Malthus
English Economist

Franklin Roosevelt was very concerned about environmental issues.

Gaylord Nelson
American Politician

In the state of Wisconsin it's mandated that teachers in the social sciences and hard sciences have to start giving environmental education by the first grade, through high school.

Gaylord Nelson
American Politician

Loads of chemicals and hazardous wastes have been introduced into the atmosphere that didn't even exist in 1948. The environmental condition of the planet is far worse than it was 42 years ago.

Gaylord Nelson
American Politician

The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture.

Gaylord Nelson
American Politician

Local innovation and initiative can help us better understand how to protect our environment.

Gale Norton
American Public Servant

Why has it seemed that the only way to protect the environment is with heavy-handed government regulation?

Gale Norton
American Public Servant

There are nuclear weapons in China, Iran, Korea and Pakistan. It wouldn't take much to send a couple of warheads off on this planet somewhere that would cause a lot of environmental damage, then if you have got someone who wants to retaliate you have real problems.

Edward James Olmos
American Actor

For me, going vegan was an ethical and environmental decision. I'm doing the right thing by the animals.

Alexandra Paul
American Actress

Mankind is considered (by the radical environmentalists) the lowest and the meanest of all species and is blamed for everything.

Dixie Lee Ray
American Politician

The government should set a goal for a clean environment but not mandate how that goal should be implemented.

Dixie Lee Ray
American Politician

Industry is fortune's right hand, and frugality its left.

John Ray
English Environmentalist

I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?

Robert Redford
American Actor

And secondly, I would impose a significant state landfill tipping fee and use that tipping fee to fund the billion dollar bond issue that I want to create to produce the funds for all of the environmental challenges that we just went over.

Ed Rendell
American Politician

There are a tremendous amount of environmental issues that are on the table.

Ed Rendell
American Politician

I wanted to help raise awareness, so I created an environmental foundation called Just Within Reach.

Kevin Richardson
American Musician

I think it makes people in the Pentagon kind of nervous to know that chemical agents and environmental factors could cause so much damage in terms of what may happen in the future.

Bernard Sanders
American Politician

Unless action is taken soon - unless we can display the same vision of that earlier period - we will lose the treasure of California's open space and environmental beauty.

Adam Schiff
American Politician

To be clear, climate change is a true 800 pound gorilla in the room. The effects of global warming threaten global environmental upheaval over the coming century. But for South Florida and the Everglades, it could be our death knell if urgent action is not taken.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz
American Politician

We should restore a proper balance in environmental regulation and energy production that is based on common sense, not political agendas.

Mac Thornberry
American Politician

Practically every environmental problem we have can be traced to our addiction to fossil fuels, primarily oil.

Dennis Weaver
American Actor

We don't have to sacrifice a strong economy for a healthy environment.

Dennis Weaver
American Actor

When we realize we can make a buck cleaning up the environment, it will be done!

Dennis Weaver
American Actor

The environment is everything that isn't me.

Albert Einstein
German Physicist

But my point is that you design something in the end that precludes any unhealthy trading practices that are not going to serve your environmental or your economic objectives but now is not the time to do it.

John Anderson

It is one of the issues that will have to be worked through however let me make the point and I think anyone would accept that if you set it up properly, not only will you get better environmental outcomes, you have a chance to create more wealth with the available resource.

John Anderson

I tell my environmental friends that they have won. Every issue we look at from an energy perspective is now also looked at from an environmental perspective.

Joe Barton
American Politician

If we bestow but a very little attention to the economy of the animal creation, we shall find manifest examples of premeditation, perseverance, resolution, and consumate artifice, in order to effect their purpose.

William Bartram
American Environmentalist

Under the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star Program, homes are independently verified to be measurably more energy efficient than average houses.

Melissa Bean
American Politician

There should be more attention paid to scientific research in the ecology area, and I think that such attention to proper environmental concerns would make the public feel much better about it.

Thomas R. Cech
American Scientist

Environmental degradation, overpopulation, refugees, narcotics, terrorism, world crime movements, and organized crime are worldwide problems that don't stop at a nation's borders.

Warren Christopher
American Statesman

All we can hope for is that the thing is going to slowly and imperceptibly shift. All I can say is that 50 years ago there were no such thing as environmental policies.

David Attenborough
British Journalist

This is absolutely bizarre that we continue to subsidize highways beyond the gasoline tax, airlines, and we don't subsidize, we don't want to subsidize a national rail system that has environmental impact.

Joe Biden
American Vice President

Environmental policy must strike a balance between the earth's best interests and our citizen's pressing needs.

Jim Clyburn
American Politician

Environmental protection doesn't happen in a vacuum. You can't separate the impact on the environment from the impact on our families and communities.

Jim Clyburn
American Politician

Liberals in Congress have spent the past three decades pandering to environmental extremists. The policies they have put in place are in large part responsible for the energy crunch we are seeing today. We have not built a refinery in this country for 30 years.

Marsha Blackburn
American Politician

Like I said, I'm more worried long term about the environmental issues then the use of arms.

Hans Blix
Swedish Diplomat

Having yet another vote on refinery legislation that uses high oil prices as an excuse to weaken environmental protections and to give more legislative gifts to the oil industry is misguided in the extreme.

Sherwood Boehlert
American Politician

Let me start by emphasizing that I am open to efforts to expedite environmental procedures for true emergencies or in other clear cases where current laws are needlessly burdensome.

Sherwood Boehlert
American Politician

Well, for starters, we have to do more to create demand for new technologies that can reduce our dependence on foreign oil and environmental degradation.

Sherwood Boehlert
American Politician

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a scam. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming.

John Coleman
American Businessman

People blame their environment. There is only one person to blame - and only one - themselves.

Robert Collier
American Publisher

By adopting the control strategy, the nation's environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.

Barry Commoner
American Scientist

Earth Day 1970 was irrefutable evidence that the American people understood the environmental threat and wanted action to resolve it.

Barry Commoner
American Scientist

Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.

Barry Commoner
American Scientist

Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline - which prevented it from entering the environment.

Barry Commoner
American Scientist

In every case, the environmental hazards were made known only by independent scientists, who were often bitterly opposed by the corporations responsible for the hazards.

Barry Commoner
American Scientist

The environmental crisis arises from a fundamental fault: our systems of production - in industry, agriculture, energy and transportation - essential as they are, make people sick and die.

Barry Commoner
American Scientist

The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.

Barry Commoner
American Scientist

The most meaningful engine of change, powerful enough to confront corporate power, may be not so much environmental quality, as the economic development and growth associated with the effort to improve it.

Barry Commoner
American Scientist

The wave of new productive enterprises would provide opportunities to remedy the unjust distribution of environmental hazards among economic classes and racial and ethnic communities.

Barry Commoner
American Scientist

This Nation has realized significant environmental improvements over the last three decades.

Jerry Costello
American Politician

Furthermore, both Pennsylvania and New Jersey Departments of Environmental Protection have evaluated the sediment to be dredged and also found it to be not toxic.

Robert Brady
American Politician

We have fought for social justice. We have fought for economic justice. We have fought for environmental justice. We have fought for criminal justice. Now we must add a new fight - the fight for electoral justice.

Barbara Boxer
American Politician

I like the outdoors and the natural world. Environmental issues.

Mackenzie Crook
English Actor

It is absolutely imperative that we protect, preserve and pass on this genetic heritage for man and every other living thing in as good a condition as we received it.

David R. Brower
American Environmentalist

It seems that every time mankind is given a lot of energy, we go out and wreck something with it.

David R. Brower
American Environmentalist

You will die but the carbon will not; its career does not end with you. It will return to the soil, and there a plant may take it up again in time, sending it once more on a cycle of plant and animal life.

Jacob Bronowski
English Scientist

There is no place where we can safely store worn-out reactors or their garbage. No place!

David R. Brower
American Environmentalist

More than ever before, there is a global understanding that long-term social, economic, and environmental development would be impossible without healthy families, communities, and countries.

Gro Harlem Brundtland
Norwegian Politician

Just as there's garbage that pollutes the Potomac river, there is garbage polluting our culture. We need an Environmental Protection Agency to clean it up.

Patrick Buchanan

I see humanity now as one vast plant, needing for its highest fulfillment only love, the natural blessings of the great outdoors, and intelligent crossing and selection.

Luther Burbank
American Environmentalist

If you violate Nature's laws you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman.

Luther Burbank
American Environmentalist

They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse.

Sitting Bull
Lakotan Statesman

Nuclear power will help provide the electricity that our growing economy needs without increasing emissions. This is truly an environmentally responsible source of energy.

Michael Burgess
British Celebrity

Federal elections happen every two years in this country. Presidential elections every four years. And four years just isn't long enough to dismantle all the environmental laws we've got in this country.

Jared Diamond
American Author

The Endangered Species Act is the strongest and most effective tool we have to repair the environmental harm that is causing a species to decline.

Norm Dicks
American Politician

We learned that economic growth and environmental protection can and should go hand in hand.

Christopher Dodd
American Politician

Cities all over the world are getting bigger as more and more people move from rural to urban sites, but that has created enormous problems with respect to environmental pollution and the general quality of life.

Alan Dundes
American Educator

Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.

Will Durant
American Historian

I don't think we're going to save anything if we go around talking about saving plants and animals only; we've got to translate that into what's in it for us.

Jim Fowler
American Scientist

If we talk about the environment, for example, we have to talk about environmental racism - about the fact that kids in South Central Los Angeles have a third of the lung capacity of kids in Santa Monica.

Danny Glover
American Actor

I don't see this planet being... they're talking about how they're turning around the environmental problems here, but I think it's already too late.

Ace Frehley
American Musician

I think the cost of energy will come down when we make this transition to renewable energy.

Al Gore
American Vice President

I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth, environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

Al Gore
American Vice President

I've always been a strong supporter of environmental protection and initiatives in that area. But I'm willing to set priorities. If we have to make reductions in one place, we'll have to-in order to increase another place, I'm willing to do that.

Judd Gregg
American Politician

All is connected... no one thing can change by itself.

Paul Hawken
Environmentalist

I think an old style of addressing environmental problems is ebbing, but the rise of the so-called conservative, political movement in this country is not a trend towards the future but a reaction to this very broad shift that we are undergoing.

Paul Hawken
Environmentalist

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.

Paul Hawken
Environmentalist

We assume that everything's becoming more efficient, and in an immediate sense that's true; our lives are better in many ways. But that improvement has been gained through a massively inefficient use of natural resources.

Paul Hawken
Environmentalist

I assume we will have figured out a way to efficiently utilize solar energy and tied that to an efficient way to use nuclear energy in such a way that it doesn't pose a serious environmental issue.

John Hickenlooper
American Politician

Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.

Aldo Leopold
American Environmentalist

My lens of choice was always the 35 mm. It was more environmental. You can't come in closer with the 35 mm.

Annie Leibovitz
American Photographer

If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers.

Joseph Wood Krutch
American Environmentalist

When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman.

Joseph Wood Krutch
American Environmentalist

Global markets must be balanced by global values such as respect for human rights and international law, democracy, security and sustainable economic and environmental development.

Anna Lindh
Swedish Politician

Hydrogen holds great promise to meet many of our future energy needs, and it addresses national security and our environmental concerns. Hydrogen is the simplest, most abundant element in the universe.

Dan Lipinski
American Politician

The environmental benefits of hydrogen are also outstanding. When used as an energy source, hydrogen produces no emissions besides water. Zero polluting emissions, an amazing advance over the current sources of energy that we use.

Dan Lipinski
American Politician

Ethanol is a premier, high performance fuel. It has tremendous environmental benefits and is a key component to energy independence for our country.

Richard Lugar
American Politician

Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance.

Marshall McLuhan
Canadian Sociologist

Maintaining healthy forests is essential to those who make a living from the land and for those of us who use them for recreational purposes.

Cathy McMorris
American Politician

A knowledgeable and courageous U.S. president could help enormously in leading the world's nations toward saving the climate.

Donella Meadows
American Environmentalist

You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere.

Donella Meadows
American Environmentalist

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead
American Scientist

A variety of factors contribute to the price of gasoline in the United States. These factors include worldwide supply, demand and competition for crude oil, taxes, regional differences in access to gasoline supplies and environmental regulations.

Gary Miller
American Politician

Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble.

Roger Tory Peterson
American Environmentalist

I consider myself to have been the bridge between the shotgun and the binoculars in bird watching. Before I came along, the primary way to observe birds was to shoot them and stuff them.

Roger Tory Peterson
American Environmentalist

Not all is doom and gloom. We are beginning to understand the natural world and are gaining a reverence for life - all life.

Roger Tory Peterson
American Environmentalist

The position I took at the time was that we hadn't really examined any of the potential environmental consequences of introducing genetically modified organisms.

Jeremy Rifkin
American Economist

Architects in the past have tended to concentrate their attention on the building as a static object. I believe dynamics are more important: the dynamics of people, their interaction with spaces and environmental condition.

John Portman
American Architect

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.

John Muir
American Environmentalist

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

John Muir
American Environmentalist

I think the government has to reposition environment on top of their national and international priorities.

Brian Mulroney
Canadian Statesman

We created the Cabinet Committee on the Environment to review the environmental implications of all government initiatives. I think what made us successful was the fact that it was a sustained approach. We did something new every year.

Brian Mulroney
Canadian Statesman

I firmly believe that we can have a healthy environment and a sustainable timber industry.

Frank Murkowski
American Politician

Pushing production out of America to nations without our environmental standards increases global environmental risks.

Frank Murkowski
American Politician

The Body Shop Foundation is run by our staff and supports social activism and environmental activism. We don't tend to support big agencies.

Anita Roddick
English Businessman

The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved.

Richard Rogers
British Architect

Unless we keep this planet healthy, everything else is for naught.

Victoria Principal
American Actress

There is no question that photography has played a major role in the environmental movement.

Galen Rowell
American Photographer

These days, most nature photographers are deeply committed to the environmental message.

Galen Rowell
American Photographer

Journey with me to a true commitment to our environment. Journey with me to the serenity of leaving to our children a planet in equilibrium.

Paul Tsongas
American Politician

I think Captain Cousteau might be the father of the environmental movement.

Ted Turner
American Businessman

A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.

Beverly Sills
American Musician

A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.

E. O. Wilson
American Scientist

It is important to consider whether the sample size selected by the Environmental Genome Project will provide sufficient power to discover most alleles relevant to gene-environment interactions.

Samuel Wilson
American Public Servant

While the Environmental Genome Project does not seek to assign allele frequencies, we are aware of the importance of accurate allele frequency estimates for future epidemiologic studies and the large sample sizes such estimates will require.

Samuel Wilson
American Public Servant

In today's world, it is no longer unimaginable to think that business can operate - and even thrive - in an environmentally-friendly manner.

Olympia Snowe
American Politician

My idea of an amusement park story is getting adventurers to go tour environmental disaster areas. After all, if the entire Great Barrier Reef gets killed, which seems like an extremely lively possibility, what are you going to do with all that rotting limestone?

Bruce Sterling
American Writer

A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmental damaging consumption patterns.

Maurice Strong
Canadian Businessman

After all, sustainability means running the global environment - Earth Inc. - like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital.

Maurice Strong
Canadian Businessman

I am on the board of corporations who contribute both to environmental problems and their solutions. And I am on the NGO side: the Earth Council and other organizations.

Maurice Strong
Canadian Businessman

One of the things that I've always thought I would like to do is to develop an environmental index. Then people can measure their own environmental performance on an index as they do in other ways.

Maurice Strong
Canadian Businessman

Ted Turner is still a leader. And he sets a great example. His ability financially has been reduced, but his influence and his example still is an important asset to the whole environmental movement.

Maurice Strong
Canadian Businessman

In the environmental movement, every time you lose a battle it's for good, but our victories always seem to be temporary and we keep fighting them over and over again.

David Suzuki
Canadian Scientist