Quotes About Stewardship

We are no more qualified to be the stewards or developers of the Earth than are goats to be gardeners.

This false belief that we own the Earth, or are its stewards, allow us to pay lip service to environmental to environmental policies and programmes but to continue with business as usual.

The humanist concept of sustainable development and the Christian concept of stewardship are flawed by unconscious hubris. We have neither the knowledge nor the capacity to achieve them. We are no more qualified to the be stewards or developers of the Earth than are goats to be gardeners.

If you have not learned wisdom and prudence in the use of "unrighteous mammon," how can you be trusted with the more enduring riches?

We are the intelligent elite among animal life on earth and whatever our mistakes, [Earth] needs us. This may seem an odd statement after all that I have said about the way 20th century humans became almost a planetary disease organism. But it has taken [Earth] 2.5 billion years to evolve an animal that can think and communicate its thoughts. If we become extinct she has little chance of evolving another.

The idea that humans are yet intelligent enough to serve as stewards of the Earth is among the most hubristic ever.

Keep in mind that it is hubris to think that we know how to save the Earth: our planet looks after itself. All we can do is try to save ourselves.

There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos, and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.

We have taken forward steps in learning that wild beasts and birds are by right not the property merely of the people alive to-day," Roosevelt said, "but the property of the unborn generations, whose belongings we have no right to squander.

doughty scrawl of his signature, a conservationist weapon, set aside for posterity (or for "the people unborn"* as he put it) over 234 million acres, almost the size of the Atlantic coast states from Maine to Florida (or equal to one out of every ten acres in the United States, including Alaska.) 54 All told, Roosevelt's acreage

I think we're simply going to run out of Nature before we have a chance to destroy it.

In Canada, when we speak of water, we're speaking of ourselves. Canadians are known to be unextravagant, and one explanation of this might be that we know that wasted water means a diminished collective soul; polluted waters mean a sickened soul. Water is the basis of our self-identity, and when we dream of canoes and thunderstorms and streams and even snowballs, we're dreaming about our innermost selves.

The problem is people establish a national park and think they've won the war. No way. That's only the first step—a battle in a longer war.

We zullen de koe melken maar we zullen haar niet slachten.

Nature takes good care of her appearance. What makes nature ugly is the behavior of human beings.

As full and equal partners Adam and Eve were responsible to tend the garden, to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, to subdue the earth, and to rule over the creatures. In other words, together they were given stewardship of the earth because they were equals.

I hope you'll listen to what they have to say and think about how you can make a difference for the future. Because we're all together on this island we call Earth, and we're the only ones who can save it. Thank you!

ONE'S COMPASSION SHOULD extend to all creatures, and one should neither despise nor destroy them, for the wisdom above extends to all of creation—inanimate objects, plants, animals, and humans. —RABBI MOSHE CORDOVERO (1522–1570)

For mines are for men, not for money. And money is not something to go mad about, and throw your hat into the air for. Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures. Money is to make happy the lives of children. Money is for security, and for dreams, and for hopes, and for purposes. Money is for buying the fruits of the earth, of the land where you were born.

Forest management is a pillar of rural communities.

To be a friend of the Everglades is not necessarily to spend time wandering around out there.

Sustainable development is the pathway to the future we want for all. It offers a framework to generate economic growth, achieve social justice, exercise environmental stewardship and strengthen governance.

I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.

The world is surprisingly hard to destroy, whereas saving it can be done a bit at a time.