This we know... the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to earth. All things are connected, like blood whihc connects one family. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life - he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
Chief Seattle, 1854

We must limit our technological interventions into nature long before we have definitive scientific proof of harm. This is the principle of precautionary action, and if we don't adopt it, nature will get along just fine without us.
Peter Montague

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

What is the use of a House if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
Henry David Thoreau

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.
Gandhi

The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too.
Luther Standing Bear

These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes - nonselective chemicals that have thepower to kill every insect, the 'good' and the 'bad,' to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil - all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called 'insecticides,' but 'biocides.
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

When you plant a tree, never plant only one. Plant three -- one for shade, one for fruit, one for beauty.
African proverb

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
Ralph Waldo Emerson