355 Quotes About Ecology

Si l'organisme vivant est un system hiérarchisé dont le niveau d'organisation est au-dessus du niveau chimique, il est alors évident qu'il doit être étudié à tous les niveaux et qu'une recherche limitée à l'un d'entre eux (niveaux chimique par exemple) ne peut remplacer celle effectuée aux niveau supérieurs.

The world is rich in small wonders, but so poor in eyes that see them.

I cannot separate the aesthetic pleasure of seeing a butterfly and the scientific pleasure of knowing what it is.

Unsportsmanlike predator-killing is always rationalized as defence of property—usually someone else’s property. This excuse is getting too thin to pass muster among thinking conservationists.

Dams also tend to be built in remote areas which are the last refuge for species that have been displaced by development in other regions.

Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as boni patres familias [good heads of the household].

Man’s exploitation of the environment is a circuitous route to unintended suicide.

Unfortunately, researches are only peripherally interested in the thousands of species discovered so far and given unpronounceable Latin names. Countless more species are waiting in vain to be discovered.

The race is now on between the technoscientific and scientific forces that are destroying the living environment and those that can be harnessed to save it. . . . If the race is won, humanity can emerge in far better condition than when it entered, and with most of the diversity of life still intact.