• "May a good vision catch me May a benevolent vision take hold of me, and move me
    May a deep and full vision come over me, and burst open around me
    May a luminous vision inform me, enfold me."
    — David Abram quoted in Prayers for a Thousand Years edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon
  • "We have entered the uncharted territory of global emergency, where 'business as usual' cannot continue."
    — His Holiness the Dalai Lama in A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency edited by John Stanley, David R. Loy, and Gyurme Dorje
  • "Conservation arises from the perennial human desire to dwell in harmony with our neighbors — those that creep and fly, those that swim and soar, those that sway on roots, as well as those that walk about on two legs. We seek to make a good and lasting home. We strive for a way of life that our descendants will look back on with gratitude, a way of life that is worthy of our magnificent planet."
    — Scott Russell Sanders in A Conservationist's Manifesto
  • "We are all of us together carried in the one world-womb."
    — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in The Cosmic Dance by Joyce Rupp
  • "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 our life depends. Our fulfillment is not in our isolated human grandeur, but in our intimacy with the larger earth community, for this is also the larger dimension of our being. Our human destiny is integral with the destiny of the earth."
    — Thomas Berry in The Dream of the Earth
  • " 'World War III has begun! Beware of victory!' So read the placard held by an elderly Native American man dressed in traditional attire, who was standing outside the gates of the White House one spring several years ago. . . .. We asked him who was fighting World War III. 'The war is against the earth,' he said, 'and we are fighting it. You and I and everybody. Almost everything we do is part of the war.' "
    — Jay McDaniel in Earth, Sky, Gods and Mortals
  • "Studying the language of nature can be a dangerous undertaking. For to become literate in nature's idiom, we must challenge our ordinary perceptions and change our consciousness."
    — Starhawk in The Earth Path
  • "Reverence for all things is the essential attitude of a caretaker who wisely and gently enhances the quality of life wherever possible. The role of humankind in God's creation is to be the faithful, prudent caretaker who walks the path of universal reverence. Each created entity has its own ordered structure, its own purpose and mysterious destiny. To live reverently in the new creation is to respect and celebrate the integrity of all that is."
    — Charles Cummings in Eco-Spirituality: Toward a Reverent Life
  • "Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity; it is a sacred act."
    — Paul Hawken in The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones
  • "I discover grief welling up when I read about the last members of an endangered species, mountain valleys threatened by a new dam, or a melting icecap. I want to cover my eyes when we drive east on a route through coal-mining country and pass scenery desecrated by strip mining, or when I see from the window of an airplane that even uglier method of coal mining called mountain-top removal."
    — Nancy Roth in Grounded in Love
  • "A sustainable future is conceivable and more probable if we can manage to instill in people a deeper sense of gratitude. In the final analysis, sustainability is as much a spiritual as a practical matter because it requires both a thorough reorientation of our relationship to the world and a radical revision of certain assumptions we have made about good and meaningful living."
    — Michael A Schuler in Making the Good Life Last
  • "Climate change alone is probably the greatest challenge humans have ever faced throughout our entire existence. The challenge is so great because the battle is not with external enemies but a war within ourselves. It is a war where we must stop ourselves in time to survive ourselves, with the planet as we know it hanging in the balance."
    — Emily Hunter in The Next Eco-Warriors
  • "I add my breath to your breath
    that our days may be long on the Earth,
    that the days of our people may be long,
    that we shall be as one person,
    that we may finish our road together."
    — The Laguna Pueblo People in World As Lover, World as Self by Joanna Macy
  • "The whole of nature touches and intertwines in one great embrace. The wind that brushes against my skin, the sun that kisses my face, the air that I breathe, the fish swimming in the water, the far-off star, and the gaze in which I hold it are all in contact."
    — Ernesto Cardenal in Abide in Love
  • "Life is Niagara, or nothing. I would not be the overlord of a single blade of grass, that I might be its sister. I put my face close to the lily, where it stands just above the grass, and give it a good greeting from the stem of my heart. We live, I am sure of this, in the same country, in the same household, and our burning comes from the same lamp. We are all wild, valorous, amazing."
    — Mary Oliver in Blue Pastures
  • "We breathe through nature. The air we breathe is generated and maintained by trillions of active organisms, from bacteria and termites to flowers and redwoods. I breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide; the trees in my yard give oxygen to us and receive the carbon dioxide. How long it has taken me to understand that I breathe in relationship with these trees!"
    — Tom Hayden in The Lost Gospel of the Earth
  • "The Zen master Rinzai spoke glowingly of bu ji: Doing nothing. Literally, bu ji means 'void of action' or 'absence of action.' Rinzai was not praising the merits of idleness. He was saying we should simply allow nature to take its course through us. When a leaf falls from a tree, when a river flows to the sea, when a bee flits from flower to flower, it happens without 'action' or 'doing.' Nature is simply being. In the same way, human beings should simply be, Rinzai says."
    — Philip Toshio Sudo in Zen 24/7
  • "There is no creation that does not have a radiance. Be it greenness or seed, blossom or beauty, it could not be creation without it."
    — Hildegard of Bingen in Wrestling with the Prophets by Matthew Fox
  • "The marvelous vision of the peaceable Kingdom, in which all violence has been overcome and all men, women, and children live in loving unity with nature, calls for its realization in our day-to-day lives. Instead of being an escapist dream, it challenges us to anticipate what it promises. Every time we forgive our neighbor, every time we make a child smile, every time we show compassion to a suffering person, every time we arrange a bouquet of flowers, offer care to tame or wild animals, prevent pollution, create beauty in our homes and gardens, and work for peace and justice among peoples and nations we are making the vision come true."
    — Henri J. M. Nouwen in Bread for the Journey

More Quotes on Climate Change