Environment Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Science has two main functions in civilization. One is to give man a picture of the world phenomena, the most accurate and complete picture possible. The other is to provide him with the means of controlling his environment and his destiny.

Without a brainy seat of consciousness and its inherent awareness of self and environment, galaxies would twirl and stars would shine, but no one or thing could comprehend the majesty of the reality that is nature.

Determinism, in the strict sense, is self-contradictory. For if man's mental processes—specifically, his attempts at reasoning—are not free, if they are determined by environment and heredity, then there is no means of claiming that theory x is true and y is false—since man can have no way of knowing that his mental processes might not be conditioned to force him to believe that x is logical, when in fact it is not.

Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken, decisions aimed at strengthening that covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God, from whom we came and towards whom we are journeying.

Pope Benedict XVI

Since the individual's desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining, the average man must take to daydreaming.

The atom is not a static structure but a dynamic mechanism in constant interaction with its equally dynamic environment. It is not a grain of sand but a wave-tossed buoy blinking from afar. If we want to understand it, we must look beyond still pictures and record the action in a movie.

Hans Christian von Baeyer

Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the a.non.y.muse roller that passed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap.

Vladimir Nabokov

No accident of environment or circumstance need cut us off from nature.... It does not matter how shut in we are. Opportunity for wide experience is of small acccount in this as in other things; it is depth that brings understanding and life.

A hydrogen-rich environment exposed to energy in the presence of carbon — conditions that certainly existed throughout our solar system, if not the universe — will, by the rules of chemistry, produce the building blocks of life.

Discipline is the ultimate tenet of education. Discipline establishes the format, the environment for academic achievement to occur.

Once you understand the power of stimulus control, you can use it to your advantage by changing the stimuli in your environment and avoiding undesirable ones; or, if that's not possible, by filling your consciousness with thoughts about their less tempting aspects.

As you sow in your subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment.

Joseph Murphy (author)

A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable environment, his touching self-delusion.

Life and the environment are one thing, not two, and people, as all life, are immersed in the one system. When we influence nature, we influence ourselves; when we change nature, we change ourselves.

Nourished people, people who love and care for themselves, are also more efficient and nicer to be around. When you give yourself permission to relax, people will feel more relaxed around you; your environment will become more harmonious. Balance - between work and pleasure, giving and receiving, seriousness and levity - creates a happy healthy life.

Nothing in all nature is so lovely and so vigorous, so perfectly at home in its environment, as a fish in the sea. Its surroundings give to it a beauty, quality, and power which are not its own. We take it out, and at once a poor, limp dull thing, fit for nothing, is gasping away its life. So the soul, sunk in God, living the life of prayer, is supported, filled, transformed in beauty, by a vitality and a power which are not its own.

Evelyn Underhill

Neurotics, who cause less distress to themselves and their neighbours than those in the other category, are at war with their own natures. Their right hands are in conflict with their left. Psychotics, and it is those who commit purposeless crimes and prefer death to life, are at war with their environment. Right and left hands strike against the womb that carries them.

The study of how substances alter gene expression is part of the field of epigenetics. Some chemical exposures appear to turn on and turn off genes in ways that disregulate cell growth and predispose for cancer. From this perspective, our genes are less the command-and-control masters of our cells and more like the keys of piano, with the environment as the hands of the pianist.

Sandra Steingraber

An environment of carping and criticism is dangerous to your mental health, whereas those who support and encourage you bring out your true potential and spark your genius.

Willard F. Harley

If you do not have a loving concern for the environment... it will no longer sustain you - you will not be worthy of it. You will not be destroying the planet, you see. You will not be destroying the birds, or the flowers, or the grain, or the animals... they will be destroying you.

Ecosystems are thus phenotypic and functional images of our environment and are divided up and delimited in different ways. New concepts such as agricultural ecosystems, urban ecosystems, etc... are now coming to be accepted. Together with natural, nearly natural and seminatural ecosystems they provide the pattern which makes up a landscape.

Behind it was that vast suspension bridge which always troubles me because it reminds me that in this mechanized age I am as little able to understand my environment as any primitive woman who thinks that a waterfall is inhabited by a spirit, and indeed less so, for her opinion might from a poetical point of view be correct.

Architecture should be working on improving the environment of people in their homes, in their places of work and their places of recreation. It should be functional and pleasant, not just in the image of the architect's ego.

Norma Merrick Sklarek

It is preferable to regard labour, including, of course, the personal services of the entrepreneur, and his assistants, as the sole factor of production, operating in a given environment of technique, natural resources, capital equipment and effective demand. This is why we have been able to take labour as the sole physical unit which we require in our economic system, apart from units of money and of time.

John Maynard Keynes

Experience shows that disregard for the environment always harms human coexistence, and vice versa. It becomes more and more evident that there is an inseparable link between peace with creation and peace among men.

Pope Benedict XVI