Today is
Earth Day, the annual event meant to raise awareness about Mother Nature’s
health and the efforts being made to protect it. Environmental groups in
countries all over the world are gearing up to take their message of good
stewardship to millions of people.
Earth Day
events commemorate what is considered the birth of the modern environmental
movement. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 on college campuses across
the U.S. and was the invention of Gaylord Nelson, a former Democratic U.S.
senator from Wisconsin whose idea for Earth Day was born out of watching the
momentum of the student-led anti-war protests of the 1960s and his frustration
with D.C. gridlock over enacting environmental protections. "It was a
gamble," Nelson said of the movement. “But it worked."
It was Earth
Day that largely led to the U.S. passing legislation such as the Clean Water
Acts and to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Here are some
interesting and inspiring quotes I found related to Earth Day:
“Look deep
into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
~ Albert
Einstein
“I only feel
angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use.”
~ Mother
Teresa
“Suburbia is
where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.”
~Bill Vaughan
“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
“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
“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
“After a
visit to the beach, it's hard to believe that we live in a material world.”
~ Pam Shaw
“As crude a
weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the
fabric of life.”
~ Rachel
Carson
"Those
who contemplate the beauty of the Earth find reserves of strength that will endure
as long as life lasts."
~ Rachel
Carson
"I went
to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential
facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when
I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
~ Henry David
Thoreau
“To see a
world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the
palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.”
~ William
Blake
"Now I
see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to
eat and sleep with the earth."
~ Walt
Whitman
"Trees
are Earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven."
~ Rabindranath
Tagore
“We have met
the enemy and he is us.”
~ Walt Kelly
“Only when
the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been
caught will we realize we cannot eat money.”
~ Cree Indian
proverb
Fall is my
favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from
the trees.
~ David
Letterman
He that
plants trees loves others beside himself.
~ Thomas
Fuller
“The wealth
of the nation is its air, water, soil, forests, minerals, rivers, lakes,
oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats and biodiversity… that’s all there is.
That’s the whole economy. That’s where all the economic activity and jobs come
from. These biological systems are the sustaining wealth of the world.”
~ Gaylord
Nelson
Until a man
duplicates a blade of grass, Nature can laugh at his so-called scientific
knowledge. Remedies from chemicals will never stand in favorable comparison
with the products of Nature, the living cell of a plant, the final result of
the rays of the sun, the mother of all life.
~ Thomas Alva
Edison
“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
“Farming
looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from
the corn field.”
~ Dwight D.
Eisenhower
“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
"Earth
laughs in flowers."
~ Ralph Waldo
Emerson
“In every
walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
~ John Muir
"When we
contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with
continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and
shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of
beauty."
~ John Muir
“Keep close
to Nature’s heart ... and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a
mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”
~ John Muir
"When
one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the
world."
~ John Muir
“Never doubt
that a small group of thoughtfully committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
~ Margaret
Mead
"That's
the thing about Mother Nature, she really doesn't care what economic bracket you're
in."
~ Whoopi
Goldberg
“For 200
years we've been conquering nature. Now we're beating it to death.”
~ Tom
McMillan
“Today I have
grown taller from walking with the trees.”
~ Karle
Wilson Baker
“A true
conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers,
but borrowed from his children.”
~ John James
Audubon
"Nature
does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
~ Lao Tzu
"An
understanding of the natural world and what's in it is a source of not only a
great curiosity but great fulfillment."
~ David
Attenborough
“Sooner or
later, we will have to recognize that the Earth has rights, too, to live without
pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without
Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.”
~ Evo Morales
“I believe
alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less
so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.”
~ Stephen
Hawking
“Why should I
care about future generations? What have they ever done for me?”
~ Groucho
Marx
“Earth
provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.”
~ Mahatma
Gandhi
“We are all here
on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.”
~ W. H. Auden
What are your plans for Earth Day? Do you have any special family traditions for the holiday?
Check out
more information and quotes related to Earth Day below:
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