„It is a curious feature of our existance that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.“
— Bill Bryson, book A Short History of Nearly Everything
Source: A Short History of Nearly Everything
„We have written the evidence of our existence onto the surface of our planet. Our civilisation has become a beacon, that identifies our planet as home to life.“
Summing up the documentation Wonders of the Solar System, episode 5
Brian Cox (physicist)10
English physicist and former musician 1968Related quotes
„But we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet.“
— Carl Sagan American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator 1934 - 1996
Source: Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Journeys in Space and Time [Episode 8], 54 min 55 sec
Context: Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours and every one of them is a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet at this moment, here we face a critical branch point in history, what we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants, it is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition or greed or stupidity we could plunge our world into a time of darkness deeper than the time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet.
„The view from space is described as life-changing…seeing Earth, our home planet, the jewel it is, a mass, a rock suspended in its neighborhood, our neighborhood, the universe.“
— Vanna Bonta Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014) 1958 - 2014
„Our beautiful planet is indeed worthy of our study; it was once our cradle—it will soon be our grave: between the dawn and the night of life, it is the scene of our busy action, and from it we shall rise to another state of being.“
— Gideon Mantell British scientist and obstetrician 1790 - 1852
Vol. 1
The Wonders of Geology (1839)
„I would have given him everything. I would have pulled down planets to make our life work.“
— Jonathan Carroll novelist, short story writer 1949
„[Tolerance] is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out, and love generally gives out as soon as we move away from our home and our friends.“
— E.M. Forster English novelist 1879 - 1970
"Tolerance"
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
„We must show our ability to become One with All, the whole of this planetary life: with our fellow beings... We must stop exploiting the planet and misusing its resources; stop exploiting the lower kingdoms and misusing their life; show that this is One World, One Humanity, One Life. This is the destiny of mankind.“
— Benjamin Creme artist, author, esotericist 1922 - 2016
The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980)
„Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?“
— Emil M. Cioran Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911 - 1995
Source: Tears and Saints (1937)
„Do you ever wonder if--well, if there are people living on the third planet?'
'The third planet is incapable of supporting life,' stated the husband patiently. 'Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.“
— Ray Bradbury, book The Martian Chronicles
Source: The Martian Chronicles
„Life is a planetary level phenomonon and the Earth has been alive for at least 3000 million years. To me the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhethoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth or heal a sick planet is evidence of our immense capacity for self-delusion. Rather, we need to protect us from ourselves.“
— Lynn Margulis American evolutionary biologist 1938 - 2011
Source: Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution
„Today, the stranglehold of the controlling negative forces upon Earth is extremely advanced and is choking the very life from our planet. The effects of this are evident everywhere in the form of fear, separation, war, disease and multifarious kinds of disharmony on all levels.“
— David Icke English writer and public speaker 1952
Source: The Veil of Tears
„The bell of Hiroshima rings in our hearts not as a funeral knell, but as an alarm bell calling out to actions to protect life on our planet.
We were among the first to demolish the nuclear illusions that existed and to unveil the true face of nuclear weapons — the weapons of genocide.“
— Yevgeniy Chazov Russian physician 1929
Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech (1985)
Context: I am convinced that today is a great and exciting day not only for the members of our international movement but also for all physicians on our planet, irrespective of their political and religious beliefs. For the first time in history, their selfless service for the cause of maintaining life on Earth is marked by the high Nobel Prize. True to the Hippocratic Oath, we cannot keep silent knowing what final epidemic-nuclear war — can bring to humankind. The bell of Hiroshima rings in our hearts not as a funeral knell, but as an alarm bell calling out to actions to protect life on our planet.
We were among the first to demolish the nuclear illusions that existed and to unveil the true face of nuclear weapons — the weapons of genocide. We warned the peoples and governments that medicine would be helpless to offer even minimal relief to the hundreds of millions of victims of nuclear war.
However, our contacts with patients inspire our faith in the human reason. Peoples are heedful of the voice of physicians who warn them of the danger and recommend the means of prevention.
„At the beginning of the last two decades of our century, we find ourselves in a state of profound, world-wide crisis. It is a complex, multi-dimensional crisis whose facets touch every aspect of our lives - our health and livelihood, the quality of our environment and our social relationships, our economy, technology, and politics. It is a crisis of intellectual, moral, and spiritual dimensions; a crisis of a scale and urgency unprecedented in recorded human history. For the first time we have to face the very real threat of extinction of the human race and of all life on this planet.“
— Fritjof Capra, book The Turning Point
Source: The Turning Point (1982), Ch. 1. The Turning of the Tide.
„Each of the major sciences has contributed an essential ingredient in our long retreat from an initial belief in our own cosmic importance. Astronomy defined our home as a small planet tucked away in one corner of an average galaxy among millions; biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God; geology gave us the immensity of time and taught us how little of it our own species has occupied.“
— Stephen Jay Gould, book Ever Since Darwin
"Uniformity and Catastrophe", p. 147
Ever Since Darwin (1977)
„The Kaizen Philosophy assumes that our way of life - be it our working life, our social life, or our home life - deserves to be constantly improved.“
— Masaaki Imai Japanese business theorist and consultant 1930
Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense, Low-Cost Approach to Management (ed. McGraw Hill Professional, 1997), ISBN 9780071368162
„Our intelligence and our technology have given us the power to affect the climate. How will we use this power? Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family? Do we value short-term advantages above the welfare of the Earth? Or will we think on longer time scales, with concern for our children and our grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet? The Earth is a tiny and fragile world. It needs to be cherished.“
— Carl Sagan, book Cosmos
Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 103
„In America we have not suffered the destruction of our homes, our towns, and our cities. We have not been enslaved for long periods, at the complete mercy of a conqueror.“
— George Marshall US military leader, Army Chief of Staff 1880 - 1959
Essentials to Peace (1953)
Context: In America we have not suffered the destruction of our homes, our towns, and our cities. We have not been enslaved for long periods, at the complete mercy of a conqueror. We have enjoyed freedom in its fullest sense. In fact, we have come to think in terms of freedom and the dignity of the individual more or less as a matter of course, and our apparent unconcern until times of acute crisis presents a difficult problem to the citizens of the countries of Western Europe, who have seldom been free from foreign threat to their freedom, their dignity, and their security. I think nevertheless that the people of the United States have fully demonstrated their willingness to fight and die in the terrible struggle for the freedom we all prize... I recognize that there are bound to be misunderstandings under the conditions of wide separation between your countries and mine. But I believe the attitude of cooperation has been thoroughly proven.
„It is a great tragedy that science, this wonderful process for finding out what is true, has ceded the spiritual uplift of its central revelations: the vastness of the universe, the immensity of time, the relatedness of all life, and life’s preciousness on our tiny planet.“
— Ann Druyan American author and producer 1949
Ann Druyan interviewed by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. — "Ann Druyan Talks About Science, Religion, Wonder, Awe … and Carl Sagan" http://www.csicop.org/si/show/ann_druyan_talks_about_science_religion/. Skeptical Inquirer 27 (6). November–December 2003.