David Suzuki famous quotes

Unless we are willing to encourage our children to reconnect with and appreciate the natural world, we can't expect them to help protect and care for it.
-- David Suzuki

#Children #Appreciate #World

Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism.
-- David Suzuki

#Education #Positive Energy #Important

What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet.
-- David Suzuki

#Important #Groups #Planets

Any scientist who tells you they know that GMOs are safe and not to worry about it, is either ignorant of the history of science or is deliberately lying. Nobody knows what the long-term effect will be.
-- David Suzuki

#Lying #Gmos #Long

Debating the best way to do something we shouldn't be doing in the first place is a sure way to end up in the wrong place.
-- David Suzuki

#Way #Firsts #Ends

Our personal consumer choices have ecological, social, and spiritual consequences. It is time to re-examine some of our deeply held notions that underlie our lifestyles.
-- David Suzuki

#God #Spiritual #Time

A baby nursing at a mother's breast... is an undeniable affirmation of our rootedness in nature.
-- David Suzuki

#Mother #Baby #Nursing

We can't blame children for occupying themselves with Facebook rather than playing in the mud. Our society doesn't put a priority on connecting with nature. In fact, too often we tell them it's dirty and dangerous.
-- David Suzuki

#Children #Dirty #Naughty

Conventional economics is a form of brain damage.
-- David Suzuki

#Brain #Damage #Economics

We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone's arguing over where they're going to sit.
-- David Suzuki

#Nature #Wall #Car

More than a billion people lack adequate access to clean water.
-- David Suzuki

#People #Water #Adequate

How you imagine the world determines how you live in it.
-- David Suzuki

#Teaching #Learning #World

We have much to learn by studying nature and taking the time to tease out its secrets.
-- David Suzuki

#Secret #Study #Tease

Just as fossil fuels from conventional sources are finite and are becoming depleted, those from difficult sources will also run out. If we put all our energy and resources into continued fossil fuel extraction, we will have lost an opportunity to have invested in renewable energy.
-- David Suzuki

#Running #Opportunity #Energy

What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet. We don't know what details of a truly sustainable future are going to be like, but we need options, we need people experimenting in all kinds of ways and permaculturists are one of the critical gangs that are doing that.
-- David Suzuki

#People #Important #Groups

If we pollute the air, water and soil that keep us alive and well, and destroy the biodiversity that allows natural systems to function, no amount of money will save us.
-- David Suzuki

#Air #Water #Positive Energy

We must pay greater attention to keeping our bodies and minds healthy and able to heal. Yet we are making it difficult for our defences to work. We allow things to be sold that should not be called food. Many have no nutritive value and lead to obesity, salt imbalance, and allergies.
-- David Suzuki

#Healthy #Mind #Body

The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity -- then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.
-- David Suzuki

#Mother #Nature #Opportunity

The human brain now holds the key to our future. We have to recall the image of the planet from outer space: a single entity in which air, water, and continents are interconnected. That is our home.
-- David Suzuki

#Life #Home #Intelligent

Fukushima is the most terrifying situation I can imagine,
-- David Suzuki

#Imagine #Situation

Every breath is a sacrament, an affirmation of our connection with all other living things, a renewal of our link with our ancestors and a contribution to generations yet to come. Our breath is a part of life's breath, the ocean of air that envelopes the earth.
-- David Suzuki

#Ocean #Air #Connections

We must reinvent a future free of blinders so that we can choose from real options.
-- David Suzuki

#Real #Blinders

The truth is, as most of us know, that global warming is real and humans are major contributors, mainly because we wastefully burn fossil fuels.
-- David Suzuki

#Real #Fuel #Fossils

Because countries often have differing political and economic systems, agreements are needed to protect those invested in trade.
-- David Suzuki

#Country #Agreement #Political

Rapid population growth and technological innovation, combined with our lack of understanding about how the natural systems of which we are a part work, have created a mess.
-- David Suzuki

#Understanding #Innovation #Growth

From year to year, environmental changes are incremental and often barely register in our lives, but from evolutionary or geological perspectives, what is happening is explosive change.
-- David Suzuki

#Years #Perspective #Environmental

People.. especially people in positions of power.. have invested a tremendous amount of effort and time to get to where they are. They really don't want to hear that we're on the wrong path, that we've got to shift gears and start thinking differently.
-- David Suzuki

#Thinking #People #Effort

If we want to move towards a low-polluting, sustainable society, we need to get consumers to think about their purchases.
-- David Suzuki

#Moving #Thinking #Needs

Our choices at all levels-individual, community, corporate and government-affect nature. And they affect us.
-- David Suzuki

#Government #Choices #Community

If America wants to retain its position as a global power, its president must listen to the people and show strong leadership at this turning point in human history.
-- David Suzuki

#Strong #America #People

Humans are now the most numerous mammal on the planet. There are more humans than rats or mice. Humans have a huge ecological footprint, magnified by their technology.
-- David Suzuki

#Technology #Environmental #Mammals

We are playing Russian roulette with features of the planet’s atmosphere that will profoundly impact generations to come. How long are we willing to gamble?
-- David Suzuki

#Impact #Long #Atmosphere

Scientists have been warning about global warming for decades. It's too late to stop it now, but we can lessen its severity and impacts.
-- David Suzuki

#Impact #Too Late #Warning

Conventional economics is a form of brain damage. Economics is so fundamentally disconnected from the real world, it is destructive.
-- David Suzuki

#Real #Brain #World

Danish studies of 10,000 birds killed revealed that almost all died in collisions with buildings, cars and wires; only 10 were killed by windmills. Alternative energy sources are absolutely necessary. Global warming will kill birds and bats, as well as other species, in much greater numbers than wind power.
-- David Suzuki

#Numbers #Wind #Car

The damage that climate change is causing and that will get worse if we fail to act goes beyond the hundreds of thousands of lives, homes and businesses lost, ecosystems destroyed, species driven to extinction, infrastructure smashed and people inconvenienced.
-- David Suzuki

#Home #Ecosystems #People

Change is never easy, and it often creates discord, but when people come together for the good of humanity and the Earth, we can accomplish great things.
-- David Suzuki

#People #Humanity #Together

You would have thought that our first priority would be to ask what the ecologists are finding out, because we have to live within the conditions and principles they define. Instead, we've elevated the economy above ecology.
-- David Suzuki

#Priorities #Principles #Would Be

Japanese people cut their energy use by 25 percent immediately after Fukushima. They showed there was huge opportunity there. And instead, the government simply wants to get those plants up and running again.
-- David Suzuki

#Running #Cutting #Opportunity

Birds are, especially canaries, are super sensitive to hydrogen sulfide and sour gas.
-- David Suzuki

#Bird #Hydrogen #Sensitive

Salmon farming-the placement of large metal or mesh net cages in the ocean to grow fish-was pioneered in Norway in the 1960s. Since then, the industry has expanded to Scotland, Ireland, Canada, the US, and Chile, but is dominated by the same multinational corporations. Wherever it is practiced, net-cage salmon farming is controversial and raises serious environmental concerns.
-- David Suzuki

#Ocean #Scotland #Environmental

We all live downstream
-- David Suzuki

#Environment

So we draw lines around our property, our counties, our cities, our states, our countries. And, boy, do we act as if those lines are important. I mean, we go to war. We will kill and die to protect those boundaries. Nature couldn't give two hoots about our national boundaries ...
-- David Suzuki

#Country #War #Mean

Human use of fossil fuels is altering the chemistry of the atmosphere; oceans are polluted and depleted of fish; 80 per cent of Earth's forests are heavily impacted or gone yet their destruction continues. An estimated 50,000 species are driven to extinction each year. We dump millions of tonnes of chemicals, most untested for their biological effects, and many highly toxic, into air, water and soil. We have created an ecological holocaust. Our very health and survival are at stake, yet we act as if we have plenty of time to respond.
-- David Suzuki

#Ocean #Air #Years

We are upsetting the atmosphere upon which all life depends. In the late 80s when I began to take climate change seriously, we referred to global warming as a "slowmotion catastrophe" one we expected to kick in perhaps generations later. Instead, the signs of change have accelerated alarmingly.
-- David Suzuki

#Upset #Atmosphere #Climate

[I]f one day I look out from my cabin's porch and see a row of windmills spinning in the distance, I won't curse them. I will praise them. It will mean we are finally getting somewhere.
-- David Suzuki

#Distance #Mean #One Day

More than any other time in history, the 1990s will be a turning point for human civilization.
-- David Suzuki

#Civilization #Climate Change #Humans

What about our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren? Do we not want them to live healthy and happy lives?
-- David Suzuki

#Children #Happy Life #Healthy

Many instances of persecution and killing have occurred in countries with atrocious human rights records such as Sri Lanka, Guatemala and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
-- David Suzuki

#Country #Rights #Sri Lanka

My parents survived the Great Depression and brought me up to live within my means, save some for tomorrow, share and don't be greedy, work hard for the necessities in life knowing that money does not make you better or more important than anyone else. So, extravagance has been bred out of my DNA.
-- David Suzuki

#Hard Work #Mean #Knowing

The terrible part of this looming catastrophe is that people have been working on solutions for years and have developed concrete steps to massively reduce our energy use, while stimulating whole new industries and technologies that are more efficient and affordable.
-- David Suzuki

#Technology #Years #People

Each of us now has 2.27 kg (5 lbs) of plastic embedded in our bodies.
-- David Suzuki

#Environmental #Body #Embedded

Come on Canada, it's time to kick our bad habits and get into shape!
-- David Suzuki

#Shapes #Canada #Habit

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

#Challenges #Humanity #Global Warming

Economics and a reliance on science and technology to solve our problems has led to an unsustainable situation where continued growth in consumption is required for governments and business to be considered successful. This is a form of insanity. Economics is at the heart of our destructive ways and our faith in it has blinded us
-- David Suzuki

#Heart #Successful #Technology

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.
-- David Suzuki

#Oasis #Blue #Issues

Think about a seed. Once it lands, it's stuck. It can't move to find better soil, moisture or sunlight. It's able to create every part of itself to grow and reproduce with the help of air, water and sun.
-- David Suzuki

#Moving #Thinking #Air

With an estimated population of nine billion people by 2050, we cannot continue to consume resources at the same rate and maintain our quality of life.
-- David Suzuki

#Spiritual #People #Quality

The one thing I feel is very hopeful, however, is the overwhelming participation of women in the movement for change.
-- David Suzuki

#Spiritual #Hopeful #Movement

Aboriginal people are key because they have a different sense of where we belong and how we interact with nature.
-- David Suzuki

#Spiritual #Keys #People

There are some things in the world we can't change...
-- David Suzuki

#World

Over and over, we hear politicians say they can't spend our tax dollars on environmental protection when the economy is so fragile.
-- David Suzuki

#Environmental #Dollars #Protection

We no longer see the world as a single entity. We've moved to cities and we think the economy is what gives us our life, that if the economy is strong we can afford garbage collection and sewage disposal and fresh food and water and electricity. We go through life thinking that money is the key to having whatever we want, without regard to what it does to the rest of the world.
-- David Suzuki

#Strong #Thinking #Cities

On December 7, 1941, an event took place that had nothing to do with me or my family and yet which had devastating consequences for all of us - Japan bombed Pearl Harbour in a surprise attack. With that event began one of the shoddiest chapters in the tortuous history of democracy in North America.
-- David Suzuki

#Japan #America #Democracy

Ultimately we need to recognize that while humans continue to build urban landscapes, we share these spaces with others species.
-- David Suzuki

#Space #Needs #Landscape

The increasing frequency of extreme weather events, droughts and floods is in line with what climate scientists have been predicting for decades - and evidence is mounting that what's happening is more severe than predicted, and will get far worse still if we fail to act.
-- David Suzuki

#Weather #Lines #Climate

Beyond reducing individual use, one of our top priorities must be to move from fossil fuels to energy that has fewer detrimental effects on water supplies and fewer environmental impacts overall.
-- David Suzuki

#Moving #Impact #Water