“Only when the last tree has been cut down and the last river has dried up will man realize that reciting red Indian proverbs makes you sound like a fucking Muppet.”

— Banksy

Source: Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall (2001)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Only when the last tree has been cut down and the last river has dried up will man realize that reciting red Indian pro…" by Banksy?

Banksy 82

pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activ…

Related quotes

“When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”

Alanis Obomsawin (1932) Abenaki filmmaker in Montreal

As quoted in "Conversations with North American Indians" by Ted Poole in Who is the Chairman of This Meeting? : A Collection of Essays (1972) edited by Ralph Osborne, p. 43. In the article "When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money" http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/20/last-tree-cut/ "Quote Investigator" states that Greenpeace placed a paraphrased approximation on a banner in 1981, which has been widely propagated as a "Cree prophesy" or "Cree saying" and alternately attributed directly to Obomsawin, as in "A Thought for the Day" at Wordsmith (8 October 2014) http://wordsmith.org/words/virulent.html:
Context: Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.

“I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

“A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.”

Walter Bagehot book The English Constitution

Introduction, p. xii
The English Constitution (1867)

“And it has only been in the last hundred years or so that the ties between musical sound and human movement have been minimized.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)
Context: It is only in the last five hundred years that music has become a spectator activity—the thought of a musical concert in which a class of "experts" performed for an appreciative audience was virtually unkown throughout our history as a species. And it has only been in the last hundred years or so that the ties between musical sound and human movement have been minimized.

“Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen the horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance. - The judge”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

Source: Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are laid waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever…. Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Act I
Uncle Vanya (1897)

“The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Variant: In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.
Source: Leonardo's Notebooks

“In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“For man to have a glimpse of lasting happiness, he has first to realize that God, being in all, knows all”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

The Final Declaration (1954)
Context: For man to have a glimpse of lasting happiness, he has first to realize that God, being in all, knows all; that God alone acts and reacts through all; that God, in the guise of countless animate and inanimate entities, experiences the innumerably varied phenomena of suffering and happiness. Thus, it is God who has brought suffering in human experience to its height, and God alone who will efface this illusory suffering and bring the illusory happiness to its height.

“But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word – even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, China’s Censorship Can Never Defeat the Internet, 2012

“Only when the last tree has been cut down and the last river has dried up will man realize that reciting red Indian proverbs makes you sound like a fucking Muppet.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Banksy 82

Related quotes

Related topics