There’s been a lot of negativity flying around lately, so I’ve compiled a list of 15 thought-provoking quotes that are uplifting, intersectional, and motivational. Because what better way to combat negativity…. than positivity and education?
15 Sustainable Quotes
What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
Jane Goodall
Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of his progress in cleaning up the landscape on which, willy-nilly, he must live out his days. It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life.
Aldo Leopold
…do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what and whom do we love? Certainly not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter downriver. Certainly not the waters, which we assume have no function except to turn turbines, float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not the plants, of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species.
Aldo Leopold
The greatest danger to our future is apathy.
Jane Goodall
Gardening with natives is no longer just a peripheral option favored by vegetarians and erstwhile hippies. It is an important part of a paradigm shift in our shaky relationship with the planet that sustains us – one that mainstream gardeners can no longer afford to ignore.
Doug Tallamy
Somehow along the way, we have come to expect perfection in our gardens: the plastic quality of artificial flowers is now seen as normal and healthy. It is neither. Instead, it is a clear sign of a garden so contrived that it is no longer a living community, so unbalanced that any form of life than the desired plants is viewed as an enemy and quickly eliminated.
-Doug Tallamy
Your garden is a protest. It is a place of defiant compassion. It is a space to help sustain wildlife and ecosystem function while providing an aesthetic response that moves you.
Benjamin Vogt
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.
Aldo Leopold
I like solving problems that seem intractable. That’s how I thrive.
Stacey Abrams
“We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
I cannot do all the good the world needs. But the world needs all the good that I can do.
Jana Stanfield
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
Henry David Thoreau
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Eli Wiesel
I never lose. Either I win or I learn.
Nelson Mandela
In the mood for some more sustainable reading? Check out our recommended reading list!
The way I CHEERED at your first paragraph! I came across one of those books in a Little Free Library this past summer while out on a walk. Racist as could be, and I was horrified. I took it home and recycled it, and am hoping it comes back as something more useful in its new life. Checking out your reading list now, because I’m always looking for more sustainable reading!