Our noses too, and our eyes and ears, are political instruments, protesters. An aesthetic response is a political action. . . . We know instinctively, aesthetically, when a fish stinks, when the sense of beauty is offended. Standing for these moments — and these moments occur each day, within every airless office building, seated in each crippling chair, inundated by senseless noise and fattened on industrial food — standing for our responses, these aesthetic reverberations of truth in the soul, may be the primary civic act of the citizen, the origin of caution and of the precautionary principle itself, with its warnings to stop, look, and listen. —James Hillman More about this quote Tags: truth politics action food control caution Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
We must always be on the lookout for perverse dynamic processes which carry even good things to excess. It is precisely these excesses which become the most evil things in the world. The devil, after all, is a fallen angel. —Kenneth Boulding More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The culture has moved to the point where I find myself in the far left without having gone there. I still feel like I'm putting up my father's old Indiana farmer's values. I think I'm a conservative. I don't think these guys that call themselves "conservatives" really are; these guys are high rollers and plungers and bet-the-farm-on-slender-odds guys; they ain't conservatives. I think a conservative is somebody who cares about conserving the planet and the air and the water and the sky and the sun. It is something mean to say that mankind has fucked up the sunshine. —Stephen Gaskin More about this quote Tags: politics conservation culture conservative sunshine Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Condoms aren't completely safe. A friend of mine was wearing one and got hit by a bus. —Bob Rubin More about this quote Tags: risk sex condoms Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Look twice before you leap. —Charlotte Bronte More about this quote Tags: attention risk certainty looking Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
We are impressed with nature's power, but by projecting upon this power an image of the feminine, the mother, we reassure ourselves — for surely a mother will always be loving toward us, continue to feed us, clothe us, and carry away our wastes, and never kill us, no matter how much toxic waste we put in the soil or how many CFCs in the ozone. The sense of nature as inexhaustible mother encourages us to feel there are no limits to a finite planet, while the sense of nature as benign and ever-loving mother permits us to continue disregarding a crescendo of warnings. —Elizabeth Dodson Gray More about this quote Tags: power danger nature environmentalism mother feminine Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
She said there were two people you had to be true to — those people who came before you and those people who came after you. —Gayl Jones More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
How would you describe the difference between modern war and modern industry — between, say, bombing and strip mining, or between chemical warfare and chemical manufacturing? The difference seems to be only that in war the victimization of humans is directly intentional and in industry it is accepted as a "trade-off. —Wendell Berry More about this quote Tags: war destruction environmentalism capitalism industry Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
An epoch will come when people disclaim kinship with us as we disclaim kinship with the monkeys. —Kahlil Gibran More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
A nuclear power plant is infinitely safer than eating because three hundred people choke to death on food every year. —Dixy Lee Ray former chair of the Atomic Energy Commission More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Myth: we have to save the earth. Frankly, the earth doesn't need to be saved. Nature doesn't give a hoot if human beings are here or not. The planet has survived cataclysmic and catastrophic changes for millions upon millions of years. Over that time, it is widely believed, 99 percent of all species have come and gone while the planet has remained. Saving the environment is really about saving our environment — making it safe for ourselves, our children, and the world as we know it. If more people saw the issue as one of saving themselves, we would probably see increased motivation and commitment to actually do so. —Robert M. Lilienfeld and William L. Rathje More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. —14th Dalai Lama More about this quote Tags: others happiness compassion Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. . . . This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being a member of a race in which God became incarnate. . . . There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. —Thomas Merton More about this quote Tags: love God laughter joy dream brotherhood relief separateness renunciation holiness Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham. —Anna Sewell More about this quote Tags: love kindness religion good Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing. —Aldous Huxley More about this quote Tags: church nature mountains father Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email