Vegetarianism & the Environment & Nature


Respect the old and cherish the young. Even insects, grass and trees you must not hurt.
Attr. Ko Hung (284-363 AD) (Confucian-Taoist)

Nothing will be left, Nothing in the air, nothing under the earth, nothing in the waters. All will be exterminated.
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)

Nature understands her business better than we do.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

... there is nevertheless a certain respect, a general duty to humanity, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants. We owe justice to men, and graciousness and benignity to other creatures ... there is a certain commerce and mutual obligation betwixt them and us.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Nature to be commanded must be obeyed.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Nature uses as little as possible of anything.
Johannes Keppler (1571-1630)

We cannot think too highly of our nature, nor too humbly of ourselves.
Colton (1780-1832)

Weed - a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
Ralph Waldo Emmerson (1803-1882)

If spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change!
Henry Longfellow (1807-1882)

Spring - An experience in immortality.
Henry D. Thoreau (1817-1862)

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for instance.
John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)

Bear in mind that the children of life are the children of joy; that the lower animals are only unhappy when made so by man; that man alone of all the creatures, has "found out many inventions", the chief of which appears to be the art of makind himself miserable, and of seeing all Nature stained with that dark and hateful colour.
W.H.Hudson (1841-1922)

...every tree near our house had a name of its own and a special identity. This was the beginning of my love for natural things, for earth and sky, for roads and fields and woods, for trees and grass and flowers; a love which has been second only to my sense of enduring kinship with birds and animals, and all inarticulate creatures.
Ellen Glasgow (1874-1945)

The only thing we have to fear on this planet is man.
Carl Jung (1875-1961)

Government cannot close its eyes to the pollution of waters, to the erosion of soil, to the slashing of forests any more than it can close its eyes to the need for slum clearance and schools.
Franklin D.Rooselvelt (1882-1945)

Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Such prosperity as we have known it up to the present is the consequence of rapidly spending the planet's irreplaceable capital.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Modern man no longer regards Nature as being in any sense divine and feels perfectly free to behave toward her as an overweening conquerer and tyrant.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life.
Elizabeth Goudge (1900-1984)

Pigs and cows and chickens and people are all competing for grain.
Margaret Mead (1901-1978)

We must develop a better sense of responsibilty towards our total environment ... this better sense cannot any longer exclude from revision the staples of our diet.
Jon Wynne-Tyson (1924- )

But I think the most harmful change brought about by Victorian science in our attitude to nature lies in the demand that our relation with it must be purposive, industrious, always seeking greater knowledge.
John Fowles (1926- )

An act of violence against nature should be judged as severely as that against society or another person. The turning over of a stone, the unnecessary felling of a tree, or the slaughter of an animal is a crime to be weighed in judgement against the wants and needs of the person and the values of his society.
Dr.Michael W.Fox (1937 - )

I would not be comfortable appearing in a country where they have permitted the destruction of such beautiful and intelligentanimals. (after her 1978 cancellation of a tour of Japan because of their dolphin kill.
Olivia Newton-John (1948- )

Despite one or two minority appeals our society is not outraged at man's unremitting use of the animal world. Ecologists and environmentalists may talk of "ecological consciousness" or "environmental responsibility" but seldom, if ever, is this responsibility articulated towards other non-human species in particular.
Andrew Linzey (1952- )


Not all the quotes herein are of the philosophy of Krishna consciousness, yet they in many ways support it, and are so used.