Inspirational Environmental Quotes

Sustainable, Regenerative, & Connected

“Organic is something we can all partake of and benefit from. When we demand organic, we are demanding poison-free food. We are demanding clean air. We are demanding pure, fresh water. We are demanding soil that is free to do its job and seeds that are free of toxins. We are demanding that our children be protected from harm. We all need to bite the bullet and do what needs to be done—buy organic whenever we can, insist on organic, fight for organic and work to make it the norm. We must make organic the conventional choice and not the exception available only to the rich and educated.”

― Maria Rodale, CEO and Chairman of Rodale, author of Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe

“Let things taste the way they are.” – Alice Waters, chef, author, and owner of Chez Panisse

“We need a new definition of malnutrition. Malnutrition means under- and over-nutrition. Malnutrition means emaciated and obese.” Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme from 1992 to 2002.

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” Hippocrates

“Just because you’re not sick doesn’t mean you’re healthy”  ~Author Unknown

“The worms also made me reflect again on what it took to improve the lives of people. You couldn’t place folks in the middle of a blighted neighborhood — without a strong family unit and without easy access to healthy food — and expect them to thrive. If you could create an environment in which people felt secure and healthy, though, you could provide the possibility of a better life.” – Will Allen, pioneering urban farmer and author of The Good Food Revolution

“Like pornography, junk [food] might be tough to define but you know it when you see it.” – Mark Bittman, food journalist

“The quest for slowness, which begins as a simple rebellion against the impoverishment of taste in our lives, makes it possible to rediscover taste.” – Carlo Petrini, founder of the International Slow Food Movement

“Garbage in, garbage out.” George Fuechsel

“The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture.”  – Michael Pollan, author, journalist and professor at UC Berkeley

“The fast-food industry is in very good company with the lead industry and the tobacco industry in how it tries to mislead the public, and how aggressively it goes after anybody who criticizes its business practices.” – Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation

“Organic farming appealed to me because it involved searching for and discovering nature’s pathways, as opposed to the formulaic approach of chemical farming. The appeal of organic farming is boundless; this mountain has no top, this river has no end.” – Eliot Coleman, pioneer organic farmer, author of The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Farm

“The first time I tried organic wheat bread, I thought I was chewing on roofing material.” Robin Williams

“This magical, marvelous food on our plate, this sustenance we absorb, has a story to tell. It has a journey. It leaves a footprint. It leaves a legacy. To eat with reckless abandon, without conscience, without knowledge; folks, this ain’t normal.” – Joel Salatin, farmer and author of Folks, This Ain’t Normal; You Can Farm

“Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open.”  ~B.K.S. Iyengar

“The nation’s fiscal health is dependent upon the health of the next generation. When we consider the cost of inaction in a matter of national security, lives are at stake.” Debra Eschmeyer, Co-Founder of Food Corps

“Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.”  ~John F. Kennedy

“Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.”  ~Josh Billings

“Every aspect of our lives is, in a sense, a vote for the kind of world we want to live in.” Frances Moore Lappéauthor of Diet for a Small Planet

“Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.” – Vandana Shiva, Indian physicist and author of Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis

“Agricultural sustainability doesn’t depend on agritechnology. To believe it does is to put the emphasis on the wrong bit of ‘agriculture.’ What sustainability depends on isn’t agri- so much as culture.” – Raj Patel, academic, journalist, activist and author of The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy

“Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.” Doug Larson

“Going green doesn’t start with doing green acts — it starts with a shift in consciousness. This shift allows you to recognize that with every choice you make, you are voting either for or against the kind of world you wish to see. When you assume this as a way of being, your choices become easier. Using a reusable water bottle, recycling and making conscious daily consumer choices are just a few…”
― Ian Somerhalder

“Our primary health care should begin on the farm and in our hearts, and not in some laboratory of the biotech and pharmaceutical companies.”
― Gary Hopkins

“Cultivate clarity, strength, vitality and power from natural, beautiful and organic living foods.”
― Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason

“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope for survival.”

– Wendell Berry

“What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?”
– Henry David Thoreau

“In Wildness is the preservation of the world.”
– Henry David Thoreau

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as life lasts.”
– Rachel Carson

“I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.”
– E.B. White

“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.”
– Leo Tolstoy

“The major problems in the world are the result of the differences between the way nature works and the way people think.”
– Gregory Bateson

“The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.”
– Gregory Bateson

“If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them something more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.”
– Lyndon B. Johnson

“We should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy—sun, wind, and tide. I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
– Thomas Alva Edison

“When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.”
– Benjamin Franklin, paraphrasing a Thomas Fuller quotation

“The Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

“The earth has music for those who listen.”
– William Shakespeare