Quotes About Conservation

“Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

— Aldo Leopold

“One of the maxims of the new field of conservation biological control is that to control insect herbivores, you must maintain populations of insect herbivores.”

— Douglas Tallamy

“But as the Everglades continued to wither, a few of their colleagues began to wonder if conservation really should mean development more than preservation. These heretics did not believe that God had created man in order to 'improve' or 'redeem' nature; they found God's grace in nature itself.”

— Michael Grunwald

“A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson II

“While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows.”

— John Dewey

“The practices we now call conservation are, to a large extent, local alleviations of biotic pain. They are necessary, but they must not be confused with cures. The art of land doctoring is being practiced with vigor, but the science of land health is yet to be born.”

— Aldo Leopold

“The skilled observer, not the machine, was the essence of conservation.”

— Robert M. Edsel

“I'm for conservation, but it's mostly a con. That's the trouble. It's sentimental. Buy an elephant a drink, a lion an acre.”

— Peter Beard

“Having lived in the arid deserts of Southern California since the 1970s, my interest in water conservation is a very personal concern. Water! The source of life! Some people are squandering the world's most precious resource while others have too little clean water to drink.”

— Eric Burdon

“I travel all over the country speaking to young people, and I am always amazed at how engaged in environmental conservation they are.”

— Philippe Cousteau, Jr.

“পৃথিবীতে আনন্দ এবং দুঃখ সব সময় থাকবে সমান সমান। বিজ্ঞানের ভাষায়- Conservation of আনন্দ। একজন কেউ চরম আনন্দ পেলে, অন্য জনকে চরম দুঃখ পেতে হবে।”

— Humayun Ahmed

“There is an analogy between conservation and education reform. The coalition around education reform is the biggest bipartisan thing going in this state right now. We need to recapture the big bipartisan spirit for conservation.”

— Rob McKenna

“Teapot Dome involved the conservation of the oil resources of the United States, especially those situated upon the public lands.”

— George William Norris

“I wouldn't miss this opportunity for anything. For the chance to work on these conservation issues, to serve my country, to work for this president, I'd do it all over again, every single minute.”

— Bruce Babbitt

“I'm doing my part, building plants at a record rate, having historic conservation levels. The only people not doing their part is the federal government that is siding with the energy companies against the interests of the people of California.”

— Gray Davis

“Conservation is key to preserving many of the world's natural beauty spots, so do your best to help by keeping to designated footpaths and being a discerning souvenir collector.”

— Sheherazade Goldsmith

“Our livelihood is intimately tied to the food we eat, water we drink and places where we recreate. That's why we have to promote responsibility and conservation when it comes to our natural resources.”

— Mark Udall

“We have to prove to the disinherited majority of the world that ecology and conservation will not work against their interest but will bring an improvement in their lives.”

— Indira Gandhi

“You lose track of time when you're deep in conservation with an otherworldly being made of pure Loric energy.”

— Pittacus Lore

“I'm a little different from all those conservation types.”

— Jim Fowler

“People are not going to care about animal conservation unless they think that animals are worthwhile.”

— David Attenborough

“Saving petrol is saving India's money. This is a sense of patriotism. The country can be energy-independent by energy conservation. I appeal to the other ministers also to do this.”

— Veerappa Moily

“Conservation is an American value, and it is lacking from this bill.”

— Jim Costa

“Well, there's no doubt about the fact that, that higher energy prices lead to greater conservation, greater energy efficiency, and they also, of course, play a useful role on the supply side.”

— John W. Snow

“Since the moment when, at the sight of his beloved and dying brother, Levin for the first time looked at the questions of life and death in the light of the new convictions, as he called them, which between the ages of twenty and thirty-four had imperceptibly replaced the beliefs of his childhood and youth, he had been less horrified by death than by life without the least knowledge of whence it came, what it is for, why, and what it is, Organisms, their destruction, the indestructibility of matter, the law of the conservation of energy, development-the terms that had superseded these beliefs-were very useful for mental purposes; but they gave no guidance for life, and Levin suddenly felt like a person who has exchanged a thick fur coat for a muslin garment and who, being out in the frost for the first time, becomes clearly convinced, not by arguments, but with the whole of his being, that he is as good as naked and that he must inevitably perish miserably.”

— Leo Tolstoy

“This is the way federal land management should work. Cooperation, not confrontation, should be the hallmark of conservation efforts.”

— Dirk Kempthorne

“I did not establish the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as a protest organisation.”

— Paul Watson

“In addition, the oil royalties the Federal Government does not collect from big oil will starve the Land and Water Conservation Fund of critical financial resources.”

— Ron Kind

“I don't flatter myself - I'm not a scientist, I'm not a conservation expert.”

— Edward Norton

“It will be objected that a constantly increasing population makes resistance and conservation a hopeless battle. this is true. unless a way is found to stabilize the nation's population, the parks can not be saved. or anything else worth a damn. wilderness preservation, like a hundred other good causes, will be forgotten under the overwhelming pressure of a struggle for mere survival and sanity in a completely urbanized, completely industrialized, ever more crowded environment. for my own part i would rather take my chances in a thermonuclear war than live in such a world.”

— Edward Abbey

“We need to invest in clean energy technologies. We need to rush them to market while rebuilding our energy networks intelligently. And it's imperative that we push toward a cultural shift away from energy waste to respectful conservation with fierce commitment that will carry us to the other side.”

— Jayni Chase

“Water can be a blessing or a curse. Too often we make conservation about saving a whale, a coral reef or a marsh. But we don't make it about saving life. The one thing that every single human being has in common is our need for water.”

— Alexandra Cousteau

“Birds, it must be admitted, are the most exciting and most deserving of the vertebrates; they are perhaps the best entre into the study of natural history, and a very good wedge into conservation awareness.”

— Roger Tory Peterson

“Conservation is not just an ideal that we read about; it works.”

— Roger Tory Peterson

“Nothing is more conservative than conservation”

— Russell Kirk

“Dating back to Teddy Roosevelt, hunters have been the pillar of conservation in America, doing more than anyone to conserve wildlife and its habitat.”

— Gale Norton

“There are never victories in conservation. If you want to save a species or a habitat, it's a fight forevermore. You can never turn your back.”

— George Schaller

“If I were emperor of the world, I would put the pedal to the floor on energy efficiency and conservation for the next decade.”

— Steven Chu

“There is a conservation of matter and of energy, there may be a conservation of life; or if not of life, of something which transcends life.”

— Oliver Lodge

“The most effective solution is to vote! Vote the climate-change-deniers out of office. Then, for John Q. Public, it's all about energy conservation: use less, because most of what we're consuming is from fossilized carbon!”

— Wesley K. Wark

“The practice of conservation must spring from a conviction of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right only when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the community, and the community includes the soil, waters, fauna, and flora, as well as people.”

— Aldo Leopold

“There is, as yet, no sense of pride in the husbandry of wild plants and animals, no sense of shame in the proprietorship of a sick landscape. We tilt windmills in behalf of conservation in convention halls and editorial offices, but on the back forty we disclaim even owning a lance.”

— Aldo Leopold

“Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest.”

— Aldo Leopold

“If religion and science could be united on the common ground of biological conservation, the problem would be soon solved. If there is any moral precept shared by people of all beliefs, it is that we owe ourselves and future generations a beautiful, rich, and healthful environment.”

— E. O. Wilson

“I like to get into a lot of things besides movies. I've been very involved with a few specific efforts. We built this park in New York and it's been a very successful project.I worked on a conservation project in East Africa. Too much of this type of stuff can get you wrapped up in your own work and I love it.”

— Edward Norton

“Hollywood has gone from the capital of conspicuous consumption to the cutting edge of conspicuous conservation.”

— Arianna Huffington

“The breakdown of his(Plato's) philosophy is made apparent in the fact that he could not trust to gradual improvements in education to bring about a better society which should then improve education, and so on indefinitely. Correct education could not come into existence until an ideal state existed, and after that education would be devoted simply to its conservation. For the existence of this state he was obliged to trust to some happy accident by which philosophic wisdom should happen to coincide with possession of ruling power in the state.”

— John Dewey

“Musicians have made incredible contributions to the conservation and environmental movement and continue to do so, more than ever.”

— Paul Watson

“Of all the problems of conservation, none is more urgent that the polluted air which endangers the American people. We have been fortunate so far. But we have seen that when winds fail to blow, the concentrations of poisonous clouds over our cities can become perilous.”

— Lyndon B. Johnson

“Increasingly the evidence suggests that people benefit so much from contact with nature that land conservation can now be viewed as a public health strategy.”

— Richard Louv