97 Quotes by Donella Meadows

You maybe able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere.

If you have a sense of the rates of change of stocks, you don't expect things to happen faster than they can happen. You don't give up too soon.

Glaciers are almost gone from Glacier National Park

Biodiversity can't be maintained by protecting a few species in a zoo, or by preserving greenbelts or national parks. To function properly, nature needs more room than that. It can maintain itself, however, without human expense, without zookeepers, park rangers, foresters or gene banks. All it needs is to be left alone.

We don't need bigger cars or fancier clothes. We need self-respect, identity, community, love, variety, beauty, challenge and a purpose in living that is greater than material accumulation.

I know that war and mayhem run in our blood. I refuse to believe that they must dominate our lives. We humans are animals, too, but animals with amazing powers of rationality, morality, society. We can use our strength and courage not to savage each other, but to defend our highest purposes.

You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere.

Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm.

World fertility surveys indicate that anywhere from one third to one half of the babies born in the Third World would not be if their mothers had access to cheap, reliable family planning, had enough personal empowerment to stand up to their husbands and relatives, and could choose their own family size.