Quotes About Gaia

“In Lovelock's view the earth was a 'super-organism,' a cybernetic feedback system that 'seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.' At the suggestion of his neighbor, author and screenwriter William Goldman, he called the system Gaia after the ancient Greek Earth goddess.”

— Steven Kotler

“The first Goddess, Gaia, who was the earth, wide hipped, big bellied, the womb of the human race, the nurturing breast of all humans, the opulent and voracious beginning of all things female.”

— Kerry Greenwood

“Only rarely do we see beyond the needs of humanity, and he linked this blindness to our Christian and humanist infrastructure. It arose 2,000 years ago and was then benign, and we were no significant threat to Gaia. Now that we are over six billion hungry and greedy individuals, all aspiring to a first-world lifestyle, our urban way of life encroaches upon the domain of the living Earth.”

— James E. Lovelock

“When we burn fossil fuel for energy we are, in qualitative terms, doing nothing more wrong than burning wood. Our wrongdoing, if that is an appropriate term, is taking energy from Gaia hundreds of times faster than it is naturally made available. We are sinning in a quantitative not a qualitative way.”

— James E. Lovelock

“Gaia is a thin spherical shell of matter that surrounds the incandescent interior; it begins where the crustal rocks meet the magma of the Earth's hot interior, about 100 miles below the surface, and proceeds another 100 miles outwards through the ocean and air to the even hotter thermosphere at the edge of space. It includes the biosphere and is a dynamic physiological system that has kept our planet fit for life for over three billion years. I call Gaia a physiological system because it appears to have the unconscious goal of regulating the climate and the chemistry at a comfortable state for life. Its goals are not set points but adjustable for whatever is the current environment and adaptable to whatever forms of life it carries.”

— James E. Lovelock

“The Earth has recovered after fevers like this, and there are no grounds for thinking that what we are doing will destroy Gaia, but if we continue business as usual, our species may never again enjoy the lush and verdant world we had only a hundred years ago. What is most in danger is civilization; humans are tough enough for breeding pairs to survive, and Gaia is toughest of all. What we are doing weakens her but is unlikely to destroy her. She has survived numerous catastrophes in her three billion years or more of life.”

— James E. Lovelock

“I know that to personalize the Earth System as Gaia, as I have often done and continue to do in this book, irritates the scientifically correct, but I am unrepentant because metaphors are more than ever needed for a widespread comprehension of the true nature of the Earth and an understanding of the lethal dangers that lie ahead.”

— James E. Lovelock

“Unfortunately, we are a species with schizoid tendencies, and like an old lady who has to share her house with a growing and destructive group of teenagers, Gaia grows angry, and if they do not mend their ways she will evict them.”

— James E. Lovelock

“The totalitarian greens, sometimes called ecofascists, would like to see most other humans eliminated in genocide and so leave a perfect Earth for them alone. At the other end of the spectrum are those who would like to see universal human welfare and rights, and somehow hope that luck, Gaia or sustainable development will allow this dream to come true. Greens could be defined as those who have sensed the deterioration of the natural world and would like to do something about it. They share a common environmentalism but differ greatly in the means for its achievement.”

— James E. Lovelock

“The gaiaphage. That's the other word they use. 'Gaia,' as in world. 'Phage,' as in a worm or something that eats something up. I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say I don't think something that calls itself a 'world eater' is a good thing.”

— Michael Grant

“Despite the wishful thinking of evangelicals impatient for the Rapture or deep ecologists who believe that Gaia would be happiest with a thin sprinkling of hunter-gatherers, megacities like Los Angeles will never simply collapse and disappear. Rather, they will stagger on, with higher body counts and greater distress, through a chain of more frequent and destructive encounters with disasters of all sorts; while vital parts of the region's high-tech and tourist economies eventually emigrate to safer ground, together with hundreds of thousands of its more affluent residents.”

— Mike Davis

“Isis what did you mean when you said to Lilith that Ian thought Gaia was a MILF?”

— Shadowstorm Norwicca

“He slowed down a bit more. "Gaia, how do you know these things?" She shrugged. "I'm smart." "And modest, too." "Modesty is a waste of time," she pronounced. "I'll keep that in mind.”

— Francine Pascal

“Pretty people do ugly things.
It was one of those laws of nature that Gaia had understood for years. If she ever started to forget that ride for a second, there always seemed to be some good-looking asshole ready to remind her.”

— Francine Pascal

“She walked away without bothering to look further. She knew he'd be fine. Her specialty was subduing without causing any real damage. He'd lie there for a few minutes. He'd be sore, maybe bruised tomorrow. He'd brush the cobwebs off his imagination to invent a story for his buddies about how three seven-foot, three-hundred-pound male karate black belts attacked him in the park.
But she would bet her life on the fact that he would never sneak up on another fragile-looking woman without remembering this night. And that was the point. That was what Gaia lived for.”

— Francine Pascal

“Would you have this?" the Protectorat hissed at his son.
Rafael's gaze narrowed in a slow inspection while she stared defiantly back. Rafael's gaze faltered, shot briefly toward Leon, and then down. His answer was obvious: no.
And in spite of everything, in the face of all the other more important dangers that threatened her, it still stung that someone, some boy, found her ugly. Gaia burned with sudden hate for all of them.
The Protectorat saw. He smiled slightly.
"I thought not," said the Protectorat, releasing her with a flick. He turned back toward his family. "I can't thrust her on any family I know, no matter what her genes are. She's a freak, not a hero. I'd rather make a hero out of Myrna Silk."
Leon had been standing tensely throughout this exchange. "I'd take Gaia," Leon said, his low voice resonating in the space.”

— Caragh M. O'Brien

“I'd take Gaia, Leon said”

— Caragh M. O'Brien

“Be good, Gaia," Capt. Grey told her, his voice grave. She still refused to look at him, but she could feel the heated flush of anger again in her cheeks. "Cooperate with the guards. For your own sake," he continued.
"Be good yourself, Captain," she said bitterly. "If you know how.”

— Caragh M. O'Brien

“When and where you are Gaius, I then and there am Gaia." The words make him smile, and he presses a soft kiss to my cheek. "When and where you are Gaia, I then and there am Gaius.”

— Stephanie Dray

“Sure, they only had ten days to stop the giants from waking Gaia. Sure, he could die before dinnertime. But he loved being told that something was impossible. It was like someone handing him a lemon meringue pie and telling him not to throw it. He just couldn't resist the challenge.”

— Rick Riordan

“Leo tried to remember what had happened. He was pretty sure he had defeated Gaia ...”

— Rick Riordan

“Hello, Darkness," Caine said.
Gaia's face fell. Her bloody, feral grin faded to be replaced by lips drawn right with fear. Her killer blue eyes widened as she looked at Caine who was no longer Caine.
"Nemesis," Gaia said.”

— Michael Grant

“And now, at last, gaiaphage and Nemesis stood facing each other.
"Why didn't you just ... fade?" Gaia demanded plaintively.
"You hit me," Nemesis said. It was a little boy's voice coming from Caine's mouth. "And that's not okay.”

— Michael Grant

“Who is it?" Gaia asked.
Would she know if he lied? He couldnt hesitate. "I think it's Edilio."
"Waht are his powers?"
"None," Caine said. And thought, Unless you count having courage to stand out there facing the gaiaphage.
"Then heep moving,Father," Gaia said.
"He does have a gun."
"Do you think I fear a gun?"
You should, you arrogant ... "No, but I do," Caine said.”

— Michael Grant

“Dont hurt me,'Caine whispered. He didnt have the will to look up at her.
Gaia laughed. Have you seen Mother? I seem to have lost her.”

— Michael Grant

“( ... ) But Gaia had absorbed the new information. "I won't need to kill billions, Diana. When Nemesis is gone, there will be no other like me. Just me alone. I will grow and spread, one body and then another, and soon there will be so many of me that it will be impossible to eradicate me. Eventually all will be me, and I will be all."
"Won't that be boring?" Diana asked. "You'd be dating yourself. You'll have no one to discuss your evil plans with. ( ... )”

— Michael Grant

“Gaia wasn't ruthless and self-serving like Caine; she was evil, like Drake. A psychopath. A mad and terrible beast.”

— Michael Grant

“Now we, if not in the spirit, have been caught up to see our earth, our mother, Gaia Mater, set like a jewel in space. We have no excuse now for supposing her riches inexhaustible nor the area we have to live on limitless because unbounded. We are the children of that great blue white jewel. Through our mother we are part of the solar system and part through that of the whole universe. In the blazing poetry of the fact we are children of the stars.”

— William Golding

“Cobbled streets and no shops open past six o'clock, a communal life that seemed to revolve around church, and where you could often hear bird song and nothing else: Gaia felt as though she had fallen through a portal into a land lost in time.”

— J.K. Rowling

“Sometimes just being on a beach with my loved ones is all the adventure I need. I am a happy camper and continue to be a citizen of the world. I have yet to discover other cultures, other peoples' dreams and treasures. I will always be a traveler who is discovering beautiful Gaia.”

— Guy Laliberte

“When the Greek goddess Hera married Zeus, the goddess Gaia created three golden apples and gave them to Hera as a wedding gift.”

— Denise Grover Swank

“Moyers: ... modern Americans have rejected the ancient idea off nature as a divinity because it would have kept us from achieving dominance over nature ...
Campbell: Yes, but that's not simple a characteristic of modern Americans, that is the biblical condemnation of nature which they inherited from their own religion and brought with them ... God is separate from nature, and nature is condemned of God. It's right there in Genesis: we are to be the masters of the world.
But if you will think of ourselves as coming out of the earth, rather than having been thrown I here from somewhere else, you see that we are the earth, we are the consciousness of the earth ... the Gaia principle.”

— Joseph Campbell

“Life clearly does more than adapt to the Earth. It changes the Earth to its own purposes. Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.”

— James Lovelock

“If you start any large theory, such as quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, it takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around. Gaia has been going for only 30 years or so.”

— James Lovelock

“We scoffed at the kids who weren't like us, the ones who already talked about careers, or bliddy mortgages and pensions. Kids wanting to be old before they were young. Kids wanting to be dead before they'd lived. They were digging their own graves, building the walls of their own damn jails. Us, we hung to our youth. We were footloose, fancy free. We said we'd never grow boring and old. We plundered charity shops for vintage clothes. We bought battered Levis and gorgeous faded velvet stuff from Attica in High Bridge. We wore coloured boots, hemp scarves from Gaia. We read Baudelaire and Byron. We read our poems to each other. We wrote songs and posted them on YouTube. We formed bands. We talked of the amazing journeys we'd take together once school was done. Sometimes we paired off, made couples that lasted for a little while, but the group was us. We hung together. We could say anything to each other. We loved each other.”

— David Almond

“'Noah' doesn't merely get the story wrong; like all Biblical adaptations, it's bound to do that (although some aspects of the film are out and out ridiculous). It gets the morality of the story wrong, and in the process turns God into Gaia and morality into radical deep green environmentalism.”

— Ben Shapiro

“I'm a scientist, not a theologian. I don't know if there is a God or not. Religion requires certainty. Revere and respect Gaia. Have trust in Gaia. But not faith.”

— James Lovelock

“Ella's supersonic voice followed her all the way to Bleecker Street and then dissolved amid the noisy profusion of shops, cafes, and restaurants and the crush of people that made the West Village of Manhattan unique in the world. In a single block you could buy fertility statues from Tanzania, rare Amazonian orchids, a pawned brass tuba, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, or the best, most expensive cup of coffee you ever tasted. It was the doughnuts, incidentally, that attracted Gaia.”

— Francine Pascal

“Downstairs, entertaining company, Desdemona heard her son's clarinet and, as if orchestrating a harmony, let out a long sigh. For the last forty-five minutes Gus and Georgia Vasilakis and their daughter Gaia had been sitting in the living room. It was Sunday afternoon. On the coffee table a dish of rose jelly reflected light from the sparkling glasses of wine the adults were drinking. Gaia nursed a glass of lukewarm Vernor's ginger ale. An open tin of butter cookies sat on the table.”

— Jeffrey Eugenides

“Gaia spins on, silently contemplating what it means to be born into a sarcastic universe.”

— David Brin

“In the Gaia theory air, water, and soil are major components of one central organism, planet Earth. What we typically think of as life - the plants and animals that inhabit the earth - has evolved merely to regulate the chemistry of the biosphere. Humans are insignificant participants, far less important to the life cycle than termites. Even the imbalance that we have created by adding massive quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere may be brought back to acceptable levels by other organisms functioning in their capacity to correct excesses.”

— David Easton

“Those of us who consider ourselves to be somehow involved in the birthing of a new age, should discover Gaia as well. The idea of Gaia may facilitate the task of converting destructive human activities to constructive and cooperative behavior. It is an idea which deeply startles us, and in the process, may help us as a species to make the necessary jump to planetary awareness.”

— James Lovelock

“Toby Tyrrell unravels the various formulations of Gaia and explains how recent scientific developments bring the hypothesis into question. His criticisms are insightful, profound, and convincing, but fair. On Gaia is wonderfully informative and a pleasure to read.”

— Francisco J. Ayala

“If the human species, or indeed any part of the biosphere, is to continue to survive, it must eventually leave the Earth and colonize space. For the simple fact of the matter is, the planet Earth is doomed ... Let us follow many environmentalists and regard the Earth as Gaia, the mother of all life (which indeed she is). Gaia, like all mothers, is not immortal. She is going to die. But her line of descent might be immortal ... Gaia's children might never die out-provided they move into space. The Earth should be regarded as the womb of life-but one cannot remain in the womb forever.”

— Frank J. Tipler

“The Gaia Hypothesis of James Lovelock [and Lynn Margulis] puts forward a scientific view of the living Earth, which in one respect is modern, empherical, scientific, in another respect re-awakens an ancient archetype, which in fact is so clearly suggested by the very name of the hypothesis, Gaia, the Greek name for Mother Earth.”

— Rupert Sheldrake

“Some of us still get all weepy when we think about the Gaia Hypothesis, the idea that earth is a big furry goddess-creature who resembles everybody's mom in that she knows what's best for us. But if you look at the historical record - Krakatoa, Mt. Vesuvius, Hurricane Charley, poison ivy, and so forth down the ages - you have to ask yourself: Whose side is she on, anyway?”

— Barbara Ehrenreich

“What the psychedelic thing can be seen as, when it's done with plants, as a return to Gaia, an immersion in the feminine.”

— Terence McKenna

“The basic pattern of life is a network. Whenever you see life, you see networks. The whole planet, what we can term 'Gaia' is a network of processes involving feedback tubes. Humans are part of the larger whole, Gaia.”

— Fritjof Capra

“I believe that we will see a lot of destruction, but I believe that if we can see the right patterns and draw the right lessons from that destruction, we might be able to rebuild before it's too late. And then I have that ultimate optimism that even if we can't, life will rebuild itself. In a way, the global economy might collapse, but Gaia won't, and people's ingenuity won't. We will rebuild society, we will rebuild local economies, we will rebuild human aspirations.”

— Vandana Shiva

“I am sure I have heard this several times from places I can't recall, but it's not already in the Gaia Quotes database, so I add this profound insight from the fields of psychological healing and spiritual evolution. It sure has helped me.”

— Robert Frost