Vegetarianism & the Environment & Nature
Nothing will be left, Nothing in the air, nothing under
the earth, nothing in the waters. All will be exterminated.
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)
Nature understands her business better than we do.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
... there is nevertheless a certain respect, a general
duty to humanity, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even
to trees and plants. We owe justice to men, and graciousness and benignity
to other creatures ... there is a certain commerce and mutual obligation
betwixt them and us.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
Nature to be commanded must be obeyed.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Nature uses as little as possible of anything.
Johannes Keppler (1571-1630)
We cannot think too highly of our nature, nor too humbly
of ourselves.
Colton (1780-1832)
Weed - a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
Ralph Waldo Emmerson (1803-1882)
If spring came but once in a century, instead of once
a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence,
what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the
miraculous change!
Henry Longfellow (1807-1882)
Spring - An experience in immortality.
Henry D. Thoreau (1817-1862)
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are
the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for instance.
John Ruskin (1819-1900)
Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared
to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever
abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
Bear in mind that the children of life are the children
of joy; that the lower animals are only unhappy when made so by man; that
man alone of all the creatures, has "found out many inventions", the chief
of which appears to be the art of makind himself miserable, and of seeing
all Nature stained with that dark and hateful colour.
W.H.Hudson (1841-1922)
...every tree near our house had a name of its own and
a special identity. This was the beginning of my love for natural things,
for earth and sky, for roads and fields and woods, for trees and grass
and flowers; a love which has been second only to my sense of enduring
kinship with birds and animals, and all inarticulate creatures.
Ellen Glasgow (1874-1945)
The only thing we have to fear on this planet is man.
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
Government cannot close its eyes to the pollution of waters,
to the erosion of soil, to the slashing of forests any more than it can
close its eyes to the need for slum clearance and schools.
Franklin D.Rooselvelt (1882-1945)
Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Such prosperity as we have known it up to the present
is the consequence of rapidly spending the planet's irreplaceable capital.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Modern man no longer regards Nature as being in any sense
divine and feels perfectly free to behave toward her as an overweening
conquerer and tyrant.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever
it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because
the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life.
Elizabeth Goudge (1900-1984)
Pigs and cows and chickens and people are all competing
for grain.
Margaret Mead (1901-1978)
We must develop a better sense of responsibilty towards
our total environment ... this better sense cannot any longer exclude from
revision the staples of our diet.
Jon Wynne-Tyson (1924- )
But I think the most harmful change brought about by Victorian
science in our attitude to nature lies in the demand that our relation
with it must be purposive, industrious, always seeking greater knowledge.
John Fowles (1926- )
An act of violence against nature should be judged as
severely as that against society or another person. The turning over of
a stone, the unnecessary felling of a tree, or the slaughter of an animal
is a crime to be weighed in judgement against the wants and needs of the
person and the values of his society.
Dr.Michael W.Fox (1937 - )
I would not be comfortable appearing in a country where
they have permitted the destruction of such beautiful and intelligentanimals.
(after her 1978 cancellation of a tour of Japan because of their dolphin
kill.
Olivia Newton-John (1948- )
Despite one or two minority appeals our society is not
outraged at man's unremitting use of the animal world. Ecologists and environmentalists
may talk of "ecological consciousness" or "environmental responsibility"
but seldom, if ever, is this responsibility articulated towards other non-human
species in particular.
Andrew Linzey (1952- )
