"People will always try to stop you from doing the right
thing if it is unconventional." ~ Warren Buffett
"Change is upon us. We can
choose to see it as frightening and incapacitating, or we can
embrace the opportunities and move forward with hope towards a
more sustainable world." ~ Wendy Priesnitz
“Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like
trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body.” ~ George
Carlin
“To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its
renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.” ~ Wendell Berry
“What is the use of a house if you don’t have a decent
planet to put it on?” ~ Henry David Thoreau
"There is no single effort more radical in its potential for saving the world
than a transformation of the way we raise our children." ~ Marianne Williamson
“Be the change you wish to see in the world…” ~ Gandhi 
"Free children are not easily influenced; the absence of
fear accounts for this phenomenon. Indeed, the absence of fear is the finest
thing that can happen to a child." ~ A. S. Neill
"We have to cultivate contentment with what we
have. We really don’t need much. When you know this, the mind settles down.
Cultivate generosity. Delight in giving. Learn to live lightly. In this way,
we can begin to transform what is negative into what is positive. This is
how we start to grow up." ~ Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those
little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” ~ Archbishop Desmond
Tutu
“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by
understanding.” ~ Albert Einstein
“The sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it
is some ninety-three million miles away.” ~ Stephanie Mills
“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as
the earth.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed
citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ~
Margaret Mead
“There is no way to
re-enchant our lives in a disenchanted culture except by becoming renegades from
that culture and planting the seeds for a new one.” ~ Thomas Moore
“There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets
in.” ~ Leonard Cohen
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our
thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.” ~ Buddha
“As parents we can
either indoctrinate children to accept oppression and domination as a natural
and normal part of life, or we can challenge this paradigm and create ways of
being with children that affirm their humanity and respect their rights as full
human beings.” ~ Teresa Graham Brett
"Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and
freedom of the forest and the outlaw." ~ Henry David Thoreau
“Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees,
then names the streets after them.” ~ Bill Vaughn
"Action is the best antidote to despair.” ~ Joan Baez
"You don’t have to see the
whole staircase, just take the first step." ~ Martin Luther King
“Simplifying your life is about gaining control of your
life – creating more time, on the job and at home, to do the things you want to
do. It is about streamlining your life so you have time for the people and
things you love.” ~ Wendy Priesnitz
"Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, you ought
to set up a life you don’t need to escape from." ~ Seth Godin
"The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn." ~
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that. Then I realized I was
somebody. " ~ Lily Tomlim
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the
chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a
vegetarian diet." ~ Albert Einstein
“The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his
life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.” ~
Archibald MacLeish
“To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an
asker of questions.” ~ Sam Keen
“It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will
cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What's needed for
dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more,
continuing. We know that it does not take ‘everyone on Earth’ to bring justice
and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the
first, second, or hundredth gale.” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“The time has come to lower our voices, to cease imposing
our mechanistic patterns on the biological processes of the earth, to resist the
impulse to control, to command, to force, to oppress, and to begin quite humbly
to follow the guidance of the larger community on which all life depends.” ~
Thomas Berry
“Any intelligent
fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of
genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.” ~ E.F.
Schumacher 
"When people ask me what to do, I tell them to just give the child all the
love that they can. Don't worry so much about anything else. And when it comes
to discipline: never, never physically assault the child in any way, and
certainly don't assault them with words, which can be just as cruel as physical
punishment." ~ Ashley Montagu
"Strive not to be a success, but rather to
be of value." ~ Albert Einstein
“When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves.” ~ David Orr
"The trouble with simple living is that, though it can be joyful, rich, and
creative, it isn't simple." ~ Doris Janzen Longacre
“He who knows he has enough is rich” ~ Lao Tzu
“It is no measure of
health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” ~ Krishnamurti
“Ecology speaks for the Earth, for the 'other' in
human/environmental relationships; feminism speaks for the `other' in
female/male relations. Ecofeminism, by speaking for both the original 'other's',
seeks to understand the interconnected roots of all domination, as well as ways
to resist and change. The ecofeminist's task is one of developing the ability to
take the place of the 'other' when considering the consequences of possible
actions, and ensuring that we do not forget that we are all part of one
another.” ~ Judith Plant
"Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies.
We were rolling drunk on petroleum." ~ Kurt Vonnegut
“You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.” ~
Navajo proverb
“Do not kiss your
children so they will kiss you back but so they will kiss their children, and
their children’s children.” ~ Noah ben Shea
“Love is as love does, and it is our responsibility to
give children love. When we love children we acknowledge by our every action
that they are not property, that they have rights – that we respect and
uphold their rights. Without justice there can be no love.” bell hooks
“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there
is no path and leave a trail” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“My grandfather once
told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who
take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less
competition.” ~ Indira Gandhi
“The tragedy of life is not death, rather, it is what we
allow to die within us while we live.” ~ Norman Cousins
"If we hope to create a non-violent world where respect and kindness replace
fear and hatred, we must begin with how we treat each other at the beginning of
life. For that is where our deepest patterns are set. From these roots grow fear
and alienation - or love and trust." ~ Suzanne Arms
“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to
mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate
troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.” ~ Buddha
“The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be
self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology.” ~ E.F.
Schumacher
“Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental
ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t
test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and
love of power.” ~ P. J. O’Rourke
“Because we have learned to believe negativity is more
realistic, it appears more real than any positive voice.” ~ bell hooks
"The only measure by which we will be judged
by the people who come after is the health of the land base, because that is
what is going to support them. They are not going to give a shit whether or not
we were pacifists; they are not going to give a shit if we supported Israel or
we didn't support Israel; whether we voted Green or Democrat or Republican or
not at all. What they are going to care about is whether they can drink the
water, whether they can breathe the air, whether the land can support them."
~ Derrick Jensen
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." ~ Leondardo da Vinci
“Reducing our levels of consumption will not be a sacrifice
but a bonus if we simply redefine the meaning of the word ‘success.’” ~ David
Wann
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its
ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is
stupid.” ~ Albert Einstein
“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he
needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering
with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.” ~ Rachel
Carson
“Public education reflects our society's paternalistic,
hierarchical worldview, which exploits children in the same way it takes the
earth's resources for granted.” ~ Wendy Priesnitz
"We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it."
~ Wendell Berry
“We have a cultural
notion that if children were not engineered, if we did not manipulate them, they
would grow up as beasts in the field. This is the wildest fallacy in the world.”
~ Joseph Chilton Pearce
"The future of our children is a trust we have been
given. To conserve and grow, not to squander wastefully on needless excesses.
The earth is a trust, to protect and to honor. Our home, our livelihood, our
future rests in the quality of our stewardship. Let us become better stewards."
~ Dr. Helen Caldicott
"Our cultural dilemma has nothing to do with children who don't read very well.
It lies instead in the difficulty of finding a way to restore meaning and
purpose to modern life." ~ John Taylor Gatto
“Education is a social process. Education is growth.
Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself.” ~ John
Dewey
"Society chooses to disregard the mistreatment of children, judging it to be
altogether normal because it is so commonplace." ~ Alice Miller
“If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the
growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present
system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for
uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.” ~ Carl Rogers
“As a society, we must own up to the damage we do to our
children...in our families and in our schools. We must also be willing to make
the sweeping changes in our institutions, public policies and personal lives
that are necessary to reverse that harm to our children and to our society.” ~
Wendy Priesnitz
"People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food." ~ Wendell Berry
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it
attached to the rest of the world.” ~ John Muir
“Some of us are just less damaged than others.” ~
Buckminster Fuller
“Those who have most at stake in the old culture, or are
most rigid in their beliefs, try to summon people back to the old ideas.'” ~
Marilyn Ferguson
“Wildness we might consider as the root of the authentic
spontaneities of any being. It is that wellspring of creativity whence comes the
instinctive activities that enable all living beings to obtain their food, to
find shelter, to bring forth their young: to sing and dance and fly through the
air and swim through the depths of the sea.” ~ Thomas Berry
"A baby's cry is precisely as serious as it sounds." ~ Jean
Liedloff
"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil,
but by those who watch them without doing anything." ~ Albert Einstein
“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut
ditch out of a free, meandering brook.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we
despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” ~ Noam Chomsky
“Rather than yearning to be full-time artists, we might
aspire to being full-time humans. When we do, art is the overflow of a heart
filled with life.” ~ Julia Cameron
“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him
free.” ~ Michelangelo
“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing
star.” ~ Nietzsche
"Only after people express their anger and sadness over the broken dreams
of material prosperity will they turn to the task of building a sustainable
economy." Duane Elgin
"Action isn’t a
burden to be hoisted up and lugged around on our shoulders. It is something
we are. The work we have to do can be seen as a kind of coming alive. More
than some moral imperative, it’s an awakening to our true nature, a
releasing of our gifts." ~ Joanna Macy
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does." ~ William James
“Nobody did a greater
mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.” ~ Edmund
Burke
"Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our
deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner
sense of justice than we do." ~ Wendell Berry
Collection of quotations about green living and natural parenting
is an ongoing process. If your favorite quote doesn't appear here, send it along
and we'll add it to this page.
