251 Quotes by David Suzuki

The nation that values youth and thinness is the most obese in the world. The place where the dollar rules has more diparity between rich and poor than any other industrialized nation. Although peace is one of its highest ideals, the United States is well known for violence. More people use drugs regularly in this land of opportunity than in the rest of the world put together. And more people per capita are imprisoned in the land of the free than in any other Western country.

Why do you need to go outside? For one thing, to appreciate what it is that keeps you alive. And the more time you spend outside, the more you are able to sense change in that world. If you can smell something, chances are that unless it’s flowers or food, it doesn’t belong there and is not good for us. But even more profound, we have to get outside and seek nature because we need that connection for our physical and mental health.

Humanity is facing a challenge unlike any we’ve ever had to confront. We are in an unprecedented period of change.

Humans are an infant species, a mere 150,000 years old. But, armed with a massive brain, we’ve not only survived, we’ve used our wits to adapt to and flourish in habitats as varied as deserts, Arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, wetlands and high mountain ranges.

We needn’t be saddened with the impossible weight of managing the entire biosphere, but we must meet the challenge of living in balance with the sacred elements.

And that, quite simply, is the issue. We live in a finite world with finite resources. Although it may sometimes seem quite big, earth is really very small – a tiny blue and green oasis of life in a cold universe.

Environmentali sm is really about seeing our place in world in a way that humans have always known up until very recently – that we are part of nature-utterly dependent on the natural world for our well being and survival.

The way we’ve set up corporations, even a majority vote of stockholders cannot demand that a corporation’s policies reflect the public good or preserve the environment for future use. That’s because profit is the one and only motive. It’s up to government and it’s up to people to protect the public interest. Corporations are simply not allowed to.

The place where we spend most of our lives moulds our priorities and the way we perceive our surroundings. A human-engineered habitat of asphalt, concrete and glass reinforces our belief that we lie outside of and above nature, immune from uncertainty and the unexpected of the wild.