Janine M. Benyus
After decades of faithful study, ecologists have begun to fathom hidden likenesses among many interwoven systems. …a canon of nature’s laws, strategies, and principles…
Nature runs on sunlight.
Nature uses only the energy it needs.
Nature fits form to function.
Nature recycles everything.
Nature rewards cooperation.
Nature banks on diversity.
Nature demands local expertise.
Nature curbs excesses from within.
Nature taps the power of limits.
David W. Orr
Our true destiny…is a world built from the bottom up by competent citizens living in solid communities, engaged in and by their places.
Henry David Thoreau
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.
If you have built castles in the air your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. Henry David Thoreau
Native American:
Remember their pllight? First, conned out of their settlements, later given the gifts of blankets laced with smallpox, and then, slaughtered as “Savages”. Do these quotes seem savage?
Sioux Proverb
With all things and in all things, we are relatives.
Black Elk Wichasha Wakan Oglala Lakota
And while I stood there
I saw more than I can tell
and I understood more than I saw;
for I was seeing in a sacred manner
the shapes of all things in the Spirit.
And the shape of all shapes
as they must live together
like one being.
Chief Seattle, chief of the Suquamish:
“Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.
Man does not weave this web of life.
He is merely a strand of it.
Whatever he does to the web,
he does to himself.”
Sitting Bull (c. 1831 – 1890), Hunkpapa Sioux.
“Warriors are not what you think of as warriors.
The warrior is not someone who fights,
because no one has the right to take another life.
The warrior, for us, is one who sacrifices himself
for the good of others.
His task is to take care of the elderly,
the defenseless, those who cannot provide for themselves,
and above all, the children, the future of humanity.”
Big Thunder, Algonquin
“Great Spirit, whose gifts to us
are being lost in selfishness and corruption,
help us find the way to restore our humanity.”
Christal Quintasket.
“Everything on the earth has a purpose, every disease an herb to cure it,
and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of existence.”
Lakota Proverb
“When a man moves away from nature,
his heart becomes hard.”
Chief Dan George
“The only thing necessary for tranquility in the world
is that every child grows up happy.”
Chief Red Cloud – Sioux
“Look at me – I am poor and naked,
but I am the chief of the nation.
We do not want riches,
but we want to train our children right.
Riches will do us no good.
We could not take them with us to the other world.
We do not want riches.
We want peace and love.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
“The Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not for every man’s greed.”
“Truth never damages a cause that is just.”
“The golden way is to be friends with the world and to regard the whole human family as one.”
“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent.”
Note:
Some would describe the actions in the Temple, where Jesus turned the tables of Jerusalems most powerful, as tantamount to violence.
Were his actions wrong? What does the Clergy have to say?
What has become of the Powerful ones, who had him executed?
Were they stripped of power, or have they been amassing power since?
What about Mans sheepish nature, has it been “capitalized”?
Is knowledge power? Does Power control knowledge?
Does Power influence education?
Have schools become training centers for Power?.
Do the Minions, who serve this Power, appreciate the deeper implications of their works?
Albert Einstein
“A human being is part of the whole, called by us “universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
“All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.”
“Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.”
“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”
“Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.”
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
Voltaire
“Its hard to free fools from the chains they revere”
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Barack Obama
“Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.”
BARACK OBAMA, speech, Jul. 12, 2006
“Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom’s cause. Hope is what led me here today–with a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have courage to remake the world as it should be.”
BARACK OBAMA, speech, Jan. 3, 2008
“The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose.”
BARACK OBAMA, press conference, Feb. 9, 2009
“We have a stake in one another … what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and … if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done for the people with whom we share this Earth.”
BARACK OBAMA, speech, Dec. 1, 2006
