Quotes from David Suzuki

Albert Einstein was asked one day by a friend "Do you believe that absolutely everything can be expressed scientifically?" "Yes, it would be possible," he replied, "but it would make no sense. It would be description without meaning—as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation in wave pressure." RONALD W. CLARK, Einstein: The Life and Times

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.

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.

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.

Virtually all of the extremely important services that nature provides are completely ignored by conventional economics. The ozone layer, for example, shields all life from DNA-damaging ultraviolet radiation.

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.

A balance between sustainable ecology and sustainable human life, on the one hand, and the unfettered drive for profit, on the other, is just an oxymoron.

The future doesn't exist. The only thing that exists is now and our memory of what happened in the past. But because we invented the idea of a future, we're the only animal that realized we can affect the future by what we do today.

We know that deprivation of love can kill people. What are the effects of being deprived of a living environment?

If we witness an act of discrimination but do not speak up or intervene, then we tacitly support it.

Human domination over nature is quite simply an illusion, a passing dream by a naive species. It is an illusion that cost us much, ensnared us in our own designs, given us a few boasts to make about our courage and genius, but all the same it is an illusion.

Corporations easily bully governments by threatening to deprive even democratic nations of their wealth. If we try too hard to control them, they say they'll leave and take their jobs with them.

By being loved the power is released in the infant to love others. This is a critically important lesson that, as human beings, we need to understand and learn: that the cultivation of the growth and the development of love in the child should be its natural birthright.

Life thrives on life;

Savremen ?ovek hoda po licu Zemlje i ostavlja pustinju u otiscima svojih stopala.

Protection of intellectual property is clearly not the only, or perhaps even the main reason for Monsanto's strategy in threatening to bring thousands of farmers into court. The purpose is to generate fear, and hence, compliance, in order to force the purchase of more GM seed. — E. ANN CLARK, PLANT AGRICULTURIST

Ancient forests that took millennia to evolve are called "decadent" or "overmature," so clearing them is justified by the notion that they are finished or at an end. Sometimes the forest industry labels such forests "wild," and what is planted and grown after it has been clear-cut is called a "normal" forest. We define things in terms of human utility, not in any way that makes ecological or even biological sense.

Over and over, the economy has determined the extent of our response, but how much value does it place on breathable air, drinkable water, edible food and stable weather and climate? Surely the economy is the means to a better future, not an end in itself. Surely it must be subordinate to a rich, diverse ecosphere that sustains all life.

With the world's human population now at seven billion and growing, and the demand for technology and modern conveniences increasing, we can't control all our negative impacts. But we have to find better ways to live within the limits nature and its cycles impose.

My childhood memories include a time when the government confiscated my family's possessions and exiled us to a camp in the B.C. Interior, just because my grandparents were from Japan.

If you're not being pessimistic, you're not being very realistic. But I think one must always have hope, and when you have children, of course, you have no choice but to work your tail off to try and protect the future for your children. And that is infused by hope in the end.

How you imagine the world determines how you live in it.

We are over 60 percent water by weight. We're just a big ball of... blob of water, with enough organic thickener added so we don't dribble away on the floor.

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.