Quotes about planet
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“Our maturity is evidenced by our beginning to take responsibility for our planet on a global scale, albeit in a very tentative, barely discernible way. We are beginning to realize what we are doing to our environment… We are beginning to see that we cannot go on despoiling the planet, polluting the air, rivers and oceans.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Art of Co-operation (2002)

Way

“Transmission Meditation is a form of meditation which is also a transmission of energy. We would not be human beings if we did not knowingly or unknowingly act as transmitters of energy. If the human kingdom were for some reason or other removed from this planet, all the lower kingdoms – animal, vegetable and even mineral – would eventually die.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Transmission: A Meditation for the New Age (1983)

Animals

“We need to end the new cold war. We need to halt the inflammatory rhetoric, pursue agreements like the INF treaty instead of abandoning them, and put the safety of our people and the entire planet before politics.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

Twitter, https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/ (4 March 2019) Twitter account, March 2019

War, People

“Despairingly, sometimes, I seek the comfort of a benign god, Shaarilla. My mind goes out, lying awake at night, searching through black barrenness for something—anything—which will take me to it, warm me, protect me, tell me that there is order in the chaotic tumble of the universe; that it is consistent, this precision of the planets, not simply a brief, bright spark of sanity in an eternity of malevolent anarchy.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Elric sighed and his quiet tones were tinged with hopelessness. “Without some confirmation of the order of things, my only comfort is to accept the anarchy. This way, I can revel in chaos and know, without fear, that we are doomed from the start—that our brief existence is both meaningless and damned. I can accept, then, that we are more than forsaken, because there was never anything there to forsake us. I have weighed the proof, Shaarilla, and must believe that anarchy prevails, in spite of all the laws which seemingly govern our actions, our sorcery, our logic. I see only chaos in the world. If the book we seek tells me otherwise, then I shall gladly believe it. Until then, I will put my trust only in my sword and myself.”
Source: The Elric Cycle, The Weird of the White Wolf (1977), Chapter 1, “A Woman Who Would Risk Grief to Her Soul” (p. 451)

God, Night, Search, Universe

“You shouldn’t need a Bible to tell you to protect our planet, but it does anyway.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Twitter post, https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1088200189524017157 (23 January 2019) Twitter Quotes (2019), January 2019

“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as our culture has defined it.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

-- David W. Orr, Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect ISBN 1559632941
Misattributed, Successful people

Courage, Success, People, Fight

“The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

-- Facebook image meme
Misattributed, Successful people

Success, People, Lovers

“Existence, for all organismic life, is a constant struggle to feed-a struggle to incorporate whatever other organisms they can fit into their mouths and press down their gullets without choking. Seen in these stark terms, life on this planet is a gory spectacle, a science-fiction nightmare in which digestive tracts fitted with teeth at one end are tearing away at whatever flesh they can reach, and at the other end are piling up the fuming waste excrement as they move along in search of more flesh.”

Ernest Becker (1924–1974) American anthropologist

"The Human Condition: Between Appetite and Ingenuity", p. 1
Escape from Evil (1975)

Science, Life, Tear, Search

“In fact, giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. With cheap, abundant energy, the attempt clearly would be made to pave, develop, industrialize, and exploit every last bit of the planet—a trend that would inevitably lead to a collapse of the life-support systems upon which civilization depends.”

Paul R. Ehrlich (1932) American scientist and environmentalist

"An ecologist's perspective on nuclear power", Federation of American Scientists Public Interest Report vol. 28, no. 5-6 (May-June, 1975) https://fas.org/faspir/archive/1970-1981/May-June1975.pdf, page 5.

Support, Life, Dependency

“There are some who question the relevance of space activities in a developing nation. To us, there is no ambiguity of purpose. We do not have the fantasy of competing with the economically advanced nations in the exploration of the Moon or the planets or manned space-flight. But we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society, which we find in our country. And we should note that the application of sophisticated technologies and methods of analysis to our problems is not to be confused with embarking on grandiose schemes, whose primary impact is for show rather than for progress measured in hard economic and social terms.”

Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) (1919-1971), Indian physicist

Quoted in "List Of Important Speeches And Papers By Dr. Vikram A. Sarabhai"
Source: [List Of Important Speeches And Papers By Dr. Vikram A. Sarabhai., https://www.prl.res.in/~library/sarabhai_v_speeches.pdf, PRL.res.in, 27 June 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20190627181445/https://www.prl.res.in/~library/sarabhai_v_speeches.pdf, 27 June 2019, 113]

Problem, Question, Country, Communication

“What do Ben and Jerry’s, an 800,000-member South African trade union, countless college professors, a big chunk of Amazon’s Seattle workforce, and more high school students than you can imagine have in common? They’re all joining in a massive climate strike this coming Friday, September 20 — a strike that will likely register as the biggest day of climate action in the planet’s history.”

Bill McKibben (1960) American environmentalist and writer

Other Bill McKibben Quotes, 2019

School, Imagination, History

“Two things are essential to the astrologer, namely, a bag of cowries and an almanac, When any one comes to consult him he quietly sits down, facing the sun, on a plank seat or mat, murmuring some mantrams or sacred verses, opens his bag of cowries and pours them on the floor. With his right hand he moves them slowly round and round, solemnly inciting meanwhile a stanza or two in praise of his guru or teacher and of his deity, invoking their help. He then stops and explains what, lie has been doing, at the same time taking a handful of cowries from the heap and placing them on one side. In front is a diagram drawn with chalk on tire floor and consisting of twelve compartments. Before commencing operations with the diagram he selects three or five of the cowries highest up in tho heap and places them in a line on the right-hand side. These represent Ganapati (the Belly God, the remover of difficulties), the sun, the planet Jupiter, Sarasvati (the Goddess of speech), and his own Guru or preceptor. To all of those the astrologor gives due obeisance, touching his ears and the ground three times with both hands. The cowries are next arranged in the compartments of tho diagram and are moved about from compartment to compartment by the astrologer, who quotes meanwhile tho authority on which ho makes such moves. Finally he explains the result, and ends with again worshipping the deified cowries who were witnessing the operation as spectators.”

William Logan (author) book Malabar Manual

Malabar Manual, Page 142 https://archive.org/details/MalabarLogan/page/n154 Malabar Manual (1887)

God, Time, Sun, Help

“If we are willing to make such efforts in order to understand foreign cultures, unknown species and distant planets, it might be worth working just as hard in order to understand our own minds. And we had better understand our minds before the algorithms make our minds up for us.”

Yuval Noah Harari book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Distant, Making love, Understanding, Effort

“Make a list of all the environmental and social problems that today afflict us and our poor battered planet.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

not just the extinction of species and animals and plants, that fifty years ago was the first signs of impending global disaster, but traffic congestion, oil prices, pressure on the health service , the growth of mega-cities, migration patterns, immigration policies, unemployment, the loss of arable land, desertification, famine, increasingly violent weather, the acidification of the oceans, the collapse of fish stocks, rising sea temperatures, the loss of rain forest. The list goes on and on. But they all share an underlying cause. Every one of these global problems, environmental as well as social becomes more difficult – and ultimately impossible - to solve with ever more people.
How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)

Problem, Affliction, Making love

“Someday, if we survive the mess we’ve made of the planet, someone will compile a detailed sociological examination of how this constant torrent of mind bombs came to affect the population. For many, I fear, the ultimate result is inaction due to confusion, consternation and livid frustration.”

William Rivers Pitt (1971) writer

"The Problem Is Not “Fake News.” It’s the Noise That Drowns Out the News". Truthout https://truthout.org/articles/the-problem-is-not-fake-news-its-the-noise-that-drowns-out-the-news/ (9 February 2019)

Fear

“You would be a fool to be tempted to bat like Rohit because he is in a different class. He is on a different planet altogether when he gets going.”

Rohit Sharma (1987) Indian cricketer

You would be a fool to bat like Rohit Sharma, he is in a different class: KL Rahul, The Indian Express, 3 July 2019 https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket-world-cup/rohit-sharma-kl-rahul-opening-india-vs-bangladesh-5812681/, About him

Fools

“Until we establish a felt sense of kinship between our own species and those fellow mortals who share with us the sun and shadow of life on this agonized planet, there is no hope for other species, there is no hope for the environment, and there is no hope for ourselves.”

Jon Wynne-Tyson (1924) British writer

As quoted in Humanimal (2010) by Vergil Z. Ozeca, p. 172

Sense, Sun, Life, Hope

“On your planet, how do you tell somebody that you love her?”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

“It’s very complicated. You say, ‘I love you,’ and then you stand back and see what happens.”
Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 9 (p. 112)

Love, Making love

“I THINK OF INTERSCOPE AND ALL THESE LABELS AS THE BIGGEST FUCKING IDIOTS ON THE PLANET. And print that in capitals, because they can’t do anything to me.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Reported in Jay Babcock, " JOSHUA HOMME: People say &#91;record&#93; labels are evil. No, they’re just lame. http://www.arthurmag.com/2007/12/04/josh-homme-people-say-labels-are-evil-no-theyre-just-lame/", Arthur Magazine (December 4, 2007).

Thinking

“The Greatest songwriter on the planet.”

Rufus Wainwright (1973) American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer

Elton John, House of Rufus box set

“Nobody on this planet had a range of passing like Paul Scholes. Training every day was a pleasure just watching him. Unbelievable career.”

Paul Scholes (1974) English footballer

http://twitter.com/#!/themichaelowen
Michael Owen

Pleasure, Training

“Under what circumstances is continuing to live like this the best option? Only if you have no belief that any alternative is possible. Only then. The celebrities feel better for taking part. The callers feel better for donating. The Haitians get a bit of aid that they should rightly have been given under the covenant of brotherhood that exists between us all, and we all just smile and pretend there’s no alternative. There is another way. There is the way. To live in accordance with truth, to accept we are on a planet that has resources and people on it. We have to respect the planet so we can use the resources to nourish the people. Somehow this simple equation has been allowed to become extremely confusing.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Smile, People, Truth, Way

“Of course they aren’t ready for it, of course we’ll spoil the place. Are they any more ready for World War Three? You seriously think we could mess the place up more than they’re doing at the moment? When they’re not actually out slaughtering each other they’re inventing ingenious new ways to massacre each other more efficiently in the future, and when they’re not doing that they’re committing speciescide, from the Amazon to Borneo… or filling the seas with shit, or the air, or the land. They could hardly make a better job of vandalizing their own planet if we gave them lessons.”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“State of the Art” (p. 84)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

War, Future, Thinking, Way

“Zidane was from another planet. When Zidane stepped onto the pitch, the 10 other guys just got suddenly better. It is that simple.”

Zinedine Zidane (1972) French association football player and manager

Zlatan Ibrahimovic, 2012 http://blogs.bettor.com/Ibrahimovic-Zidane-is-out-of-this-world-a209913

Guy

“In the ages to come man may be able to predict, perhaps even to control, the wayward courses of the winds and the clouds, but hardly will his puny hands have strength to speed afresh our slackening planet in its orbit or rekindle the dying fire of the sun. Yet the philosopher who trembles at the idea of such distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that these gloomy apprehensions, like the earth and the sun themselves, are only parts of that unsubstantial world which thought has conjured up out of the void, and that the phantoms which the subtle enchantress has evoked to-day she may ban to-morrow. They too, like so much that to the common eye seems solid, may melt into air, into thin air.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 69, Farewell to Nemi

Sun, Speed, Distant, Age

“A sparrow can be as interesting as a bird of paradise, the behaviour of a mouse as interesting as that of a tiger. Our planet is beautifully intricate, brimming over with enigmas to be solved and riddles to be unravelled.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

Bird

“If men are from Mars and women from Venus, what planet did Jack come from? Jack insists he is from planet earth.”

Jack LaLanne (1914–2011) American exercise instructor

Diana Cyr, in "Live Young Forever: 12 Steps to Optimum Health, Fitness and Longevity", p. 10

Women, Men

“I think I’ve gone through quite an ordinary series of steps in life. I began as most children began, with God and Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny all being about the same thing. Then I went through the things that I think sensitive people go through, wrestling with the thoughts of Jesus—did he shit? Did he screw? I began to dare to believe that God wasn’t some white beard. I began to look upon the miseries of the human race and to think God was not as simple as my mother said. As nearly as I can concentrate on the question today, I believe I am God; certainly you are, I think we intelligent beings on this planet are all a piece of God, are becoming God. In some sort of cyclical non-time thing we have to become God, so that we can end up creating ourselves, so that we can be in the first place. … My own feeling is that relation to God as a person is a petty, superstitious approach to the All, the infinite.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

As quoted in God & (1975) by Terrance A. Sweeney

God, Time, Question, Personality

“We are witnessing history. This is the most dominant athlete on planet earth today.”

Roger Federer (1981) Swiss tennis player

Jim Courier, former world No.1, while commentating on Australia's Channel Seven in 2007 http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200701/25/eng20070125_344854.html

History

“I love people. And I think if you take the 7 billion people on the planet and you round it off, about 7 billion of them are good. To find bad people is really difficult. Not people doing bad things, but really bad people who get up in the morning and say, How can I fuck people up? That’s a really rare thing. Misguided, you know, mistaken, but I just can’t understand how this view of humanity that all we want to do is horrible things to each other and it’s just this belief in something else that stops us. And that that is what you see over and over again through the Bible. There’s reward and punishment but there’s no – I mean, nothing feels better than helping someone out. I mean, there’s nothing better, nothing better in the world than someone whose life was fucked up and you do a little something and now their life isn’t. I mean, you can talk about the joy of sex, hedonistic joys of food, and you can talk about the joy with your children, but man, someone is going through a hard time and you help them out, man you feel good for months.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

2010s, Penn Jillette Rapes All the Women He Wants To (2012)

Time, Understanding, Food, Bad luck

“AL GORE: And even though it has gone through this exhaustive 20-year peer review process with the 3,000 best scientists in the world unanimously endorsing it, every national academy of sciences in a developed country on this planet endorsing it, still, based on some radio talk show host or some odd orthogonal argument…”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes from Interviews

World, Science, Country

“Our age is in many ways unique, full of events and phenomena that never occurred before and can never happen again. They distort our thinking, making us believe that what is true now will be true forever, though perhaps on a larger scale. Because we have annihilated distance on this planet, we imagine that we can do it once again. The facts are otherwise, and we see them more clearly if we forget the present and turn our minds towards the past.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

1960s, We'll Never Conquer Space (1960)

Imagination, Forgetting, Past, Thinking

“There was nothing like a museum for calming the mind, for putting the problems of everyday life in their true perspective. Here, surrounded by the infinite variety and wonder of Nature, he was reminded of truths he had forgotten. He was only one of a million million creatures that shared this planet Earth. The entire human race, with its hopes and fears, its triumphs and its follies, might be no more than an incident in the history of the world.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Death and the Senator

Death and the Senator, p. 744
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Fear, History, Hope, Nature

“They call him father, liberator, warlord, Reaper. But he feels a boy as he falls toward the pale blue planet, his armor red, his army vast, his heart heavy. It is the tenth year of war and the thirty-second of his life.”

Pierce Brown book Iron Gold

Iron Gold (2018)

War, Heart, Boy, Life

“Replicators are no longer peppered freely through the sea; they are packaged in huge colonies—individual bodies. And phenotypic consequences, instead of being evenly distributed throughout the world, have in many cases congealed into those same bodies. But the individual body, so familiar to us on our planet, did not have to exist. The only kind of entity that has to exist in order for life to arise, anywhere in the universe, is the immortal replicator.”

Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene

Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 13. The Long Reach of the Gene

Universe, Life, Sea, World

“Thing is, we’re humans. We’re tribal. More settled things are, the bigger your tribe is. All the people in your gang, or all the people in your country. All the ones on your planet. Then the churn comes, and the tribe gets small again.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 30 (p. 317)

People, Country

“I was almost driven to madness in considering and calculating this matter. I could not find out why the planet would rather go on an elliptical orbit. Oh, ridiculous me! As the liberation in the diameter could not also be the way to the ellipse. So this notion brought me up short, that the ellipse exists because of the liberation. With reasoning derived from physical principles, agreeing with experience, there is no figure left for the orbit of the planet but a perfect ellipse.”

Johannes Kepler book Mysterium Cosmographicum

As translated and quoted in John Freely, Before Galileo: The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe (2012), in chapter 58, at an unspecified page.
Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596), Astronomia nova (1609)

Perfection, Way, Madness

“We have entered a world of great migrations and we will have more and more of it. Because the planet is in deep imbalance, we will have in the coming decades migrations due to geopolitical conflicts that will continue to play out, and we will have climate migrations... France will not be able to stem it... migratory phenomena much stronger than what we experienced with Syria."”

Emmanuel Macron (1977) 25th President of the French Republic

22 February 2017 https://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/politique/sante-handicap-et-refugies-jean-claude-ameisen-debat-avec-emmanuel-macron_110755 2017 Original: (fr) Nous sommes entrés dans un monde de grandes migrations. Et on en aura de plus en plus. Parce que la planète est en profond déséquilibre, nous auront dans les décennies qui viennent des migrations dues à des conflits géopolitiques qui vont continuer à se jouer et nous aurons des migrations climatiques... La France ne pourra pas l'endiguer... des phénomènes migratoires beaucoup plus forts que ce qu'on a vécu avec la Syrie.

World

““… I said about limiting factors. Well, there’s one that you can’t beat. Put steel under fifty thousand pounds per square inch pressure and it starts to flow. The metal used in this machine must have been able to withstand much greater pressure, but there was a limit beyond which it was not safe to go. At twenty miles above the planet’s surface, they had reached that limit. They had reached dead end.” <…>”

Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988) American writer, journalist

Из малой прозы

Dead

“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 (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980)

World, Life

“Start with a planet like the earth, with a complement of simple compounds bound to exist upon it, add the energy of a nearby sun, and you are bound to end with nucleic acids. You can't avoid it.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"Constructing a Man" in Is Anyone There? (1967), p. 93
General sources

Sun

“We have had a profound paradigm shift about the Whole Earth. We know it now as a jewel in space, a fragile water planet. And we have seen that it has no natural borders. It is not the globe of our school days with its many-colored nations.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Thirteen, The Whole- Earth Conspiracy, p.407

School, Water, Color, Nature

“There are two ways this could go. We could, as some people have done, double down on denial. Some of those who have dismissed other threats, such as climate breakdown, also seek to downplay the threat of Covid-19... Or this could be the moment when we begin to see ourselves, once more, as governed by biology and physics, and dependent on a habitable planet. Never again should we listen to the liars and the deniers. Never again should we allow a comforting falsehood to trounce a painful truth. No longer can we afford to be dominated by those who put money ahead of life...”

George Monbiot (1963) English writer and political activist

Covid-19 is nature's wake-up call to complacent civilisation https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/25/covid-19-is-natures-wake-up-call-to-complacent-civilisation?, The Guardian, 25 March 2020

Money, Pain, Dependency, People

“The quaddies, he reflected, didn’t seem to have a very clear idea of private property. Probably came from a lifetime spent in a communal space habitat, with its tight ecology. Planets were communal in the same way, really, except that their enormous size put so much slack in their systems, it was disguised.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 9 (p. 166)

Way, Idea, Communication

“My mom was always interested in [social and environmental justice movements]. Life on this planet becomes more joyful when you become less afraid of people who look or speak different than you.”

Chris Martin (1977) musician, co-founder of Coldplay

https://www.complex.com/music/2020/01/grammys-2020-on-the-ground-report?

Life, People, Justice, Moms

“It is our disregard for nature and our disrespect of the animals we should share the planet with that has caused this pandemic, that was predicted long ago.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

" Jane Goodall says 'disrespect for animals' caused pandemic https://news.yahoo.com/jane-goodall-says-disrespect-animals-caused-pandemic-091036641.html", Yahoo News, April 11, 2020.

Animals, Nature

“As long as weapons of mass destruction exist, primarily nuclear weapons, the danger is colossal. All nations should declare... that nuclear weapons must be destroyed. This is to save ourselves and our planet.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Quoted in https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-50265870/mikhail-gorbachev-tells-the-bbc-world-in-colossal-danger Mikhail Gorbachev tells the BBC: World in ‘colossal danger’, BBC World News,(4 November 2019)
2000s

“Just finished a very good conversation with President Xi of China. Discussed in great detail the CoronaVirus that is ravaging large parts of our Planet. China has been through much & has developed a strong understanding of the Virus. We are working closely together. Much respect!”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Quoted in * 2020-03-27

Trump claims Asian Americans are angry at 'what China has done' to U.S.

Kimmy Yam

Yahoo News / NBC News

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-claims-asian-americans-angry-190959445.html
2020s, 2020, March

Parting, Strong, Understanding

“And, after all, what is a planet but an island in space?”

John Wyndham book The Midwich Cuckoos

The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), Ch 19 - p.205 [Zellaby]

“That the stars are celestial bodies with no mind or soul. They neither know the future nor affect people. Their effect on people however can be through their physical characteristics, such as the effect of the sun’s heat and rays on the planets and the effect of the moon on the tides of seas.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

Al-Fassl Fil Milal, vol 5, pp 35-39

Soul, Sun, Future, Star

“Life can exist on other planets, in other solar systems, in other galaxies and universes.”

J. Posadas (1912–1981) Argentine Trotskyist (1912-1981)

Source: Flying saucers, the process of matter and energy, science, the revolutionary and working-class struggle and the socialist future of mankind (26 June 1968)

Universe, Life

“The Church of Euthanasia has as its four stations of the cross sodomy, suicide, abortion and cannibalism. In their activism towards the end of human life on the planet, their posthumanism interestingly resonates with human minoritarian activism. Roughly, these correlate as sodomy with queer (where sodomy is defined as any non-reproductive sexual act, including masturbation, asexuality and heterosexual intercourse with no intention of procreation), abortion with female/feminist sexuate rights, cannibalism with animal rights, where human carcasses are used as a source of food instead of murdering animals, and suicide with agency over one's own life and thus death, including euthanasia with disability rights in reference to the right to die versus the enforcement of life on those who express a wish to die but cannot execute their own death. It shouldn't need to be pointed out that neither group advocates murder or eugenics (however ironically that may sit considering the murder advocated by sanctioned capital and war machines). These are two of the longest established of now many groups advocating human extinction.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Embracing Death, pp. 143-144
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

Life, Food, War, Animals

“Do you really think your terrestrial counterpart is living in the best of all possible worlds? Where I come from, an eighth grader would be ashamed to enter planet Earth in a junior high school science fair.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 15 (p. 387)

School, Science, Thinking, World

“What seems to us for us is true.
The planet has no proper light,
And yet when Venus is in view,
No primal star is half so bright.”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

Book II, Canto I, V Perspective.
The Angel In The House (1854)

Light, Star

“As soon as we have conquered the moon, we must make plans to conquer the planets. I am not denying that there is in all this a fine mixed element of enterprise, ingenuity and adventure.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Source: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 7, p. 170

Making love

“What's happening in the world and in the ocean has changed our time horizon. We can be incredibly pessimistic on the short term, and mourn what we lost and what we really took for granted. But we can still be optimistic on the long term, and we can still be ambitious about what we fight for and what we expect from our governments, from our planet. Corals have been living on planet Earth for hundreds of millions of years. They survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. They're badasses. An individual coral can go through tremendous trauma and fully recover if it's given a chance and it's given protection. Corals have always been playing the long game, and now so are we.”

Kristen Marhaver American marine biologist

Source: Why I still have hope for coral reefs https://www.ted.com/talks/kristen_marhaver_why_i_still_have_hope_for_coral_reefs (April 2017)

Chance, Time, Game, World

“Each of us can contribute, though. With our votes, our voices, our food choices, our skills and our dollars. We must overhaul both corporate practices and government policies. We must transform culture. Building community around solutions is the most important thing. I am never going to give up working to protect and restore this magnificent planet. Every bit of habitat we preserve, every tenth of a degree of warming we prevent, really does matter. Thankfully, I'm not motivated by hope, but rather a desire to be useful.”

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (1980) American marine biologist and policy expert

Source: A love story for the coral reef crisis https://www.ted.com/talks/ayana_elizabeth_johnson_a_love_story_for_the_coral_reef_crisis (April 2019)

Motivation, Communication, Hope, Food

“Mars has always captured the human imagination for decades and decades, it’s always been the planet that everyone’s looking toward. Knowing it’s out there, it’s what drives everything that we do.”

Jessica Meir (1977) Swedish-American marine biologist and astronaut

Source: As quoted in [Kaplan, Sarah, Journey to Mars: Meet NASA astronaut candidate Jessica Meir, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/journey-to-mars-jessica-meir/2015/04/28/29d206a0-b11b-11e4-886b-c22184f27c35_story.html?utm_term=.573b6aa772fe, 26 April 2019, The Washington Post, April 28, 2015]

Imagination

“I was drawn to oceanography by just this kind of challenge. To me it represents the perfect intersection of science, technology and the unknown, the spark for so many breakthrough discoveries about life on our planet.”

Heidi Sosik researcher

Source: The discoveries awaiting us in the ocean's twilight zone https://www.ted.com/talks/heidi_m_sosik_the_discoveries_awaiting_us_in_the_ocean_s_twilight_zone (April 2018)

Perfection, Science, Life

“Think of life as being this book, an unfinished book for sure. We're just seeing the last few pages of each chapter. If you look out on the eight million species that we share this planet with, think of them all being four billion years of evolution. They're all the product of that. Think of us all as young leaves on this ancient and gigantic tree of life, all of us connected by invisible branches not just to each other, but to our extinct relatives and our evolutionary ancestors. As a biologist, I'm still trying to learn, with others, how everyone's related to each other, who is related to whom. Perhaps it's better still to think of us as a little fish out of water. Yes, one that learned to walk and talk, but one that still has a lot of learning to do about who we are and where we came from.”

Prosanta Chakrabarty (1978) American ichthyologist

Source: Four billion years of evolution in six minutes https://www.ted.com/talks/prosanta_chakrabarty_four_billion_years_of_evolution_in_six_minutes (April 2018)

Tree, Learning, Water, Thinking

“This Administration has been looking hard at exactly what civil defense can and cannot do. It cannot be obtained cheaply. It cannot give an assurance of blast protection that will be proof against surprise attack or guaranteed against obsolescence or destruction. And it cannot deter a nuclear attack. We will deter an enemy from making a nuclear attack only if our retaliatory power is so strong and so invulnerable that he knows he would be destroyed by our response. If we have that strength, civil defense is not needed to deter an attack. If we should ever lack it, civil defense would not be an adequate substitute. But this deterrent concept assumes rational calculations by rational men. And the history of this planet, and particularly the history of the 20th century, is sufficient to remind us of the possibilities of an irrational attack, a miscalculation, an accidental war, for a war of escalation in which the stakes by each side gradually increase to the point of maximum danger which cannot be either foreseen or deterred. It is on this basis that civil defense can be readily justifiable--as insurance for the civilian population in case of an enemy miscalculation. It is insurance we trust will never be needed--but insurance which we could never forgive ourselves for foregoing in the event of catastrophe. Once the validity of this concept is recognized, there is no point in delaying the initiation of a nation-wide long-range program of identifying present fallout shelter capacity and providing shelter in new and existing structures. Such a program would protect millions of people against the hazards of radioactive fallout in the event of large-scale nuclear attack. Effective performance of the entire program not only requires new legislative authority and more funds, but also sound organizational arrangements.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Forgiveness, History, Strong, War

“iPhone is the most profitable product in the history of business, but more than a decade after its debut, pretty much everyone on the planet who can afford one already has one ...”

Farhad Manjoo (1978) American journalist

Source: The Incredible Shrinking Apple http://nytimes.com/2019/04/03/opinion/apple-steve-jobs.html in The New York Times (3 April 2019)

Business, History

“Look at the solar system, and look at the Earth. On Earth, there are many intelligent species, but only one has achieved technology. Right here in the journey of our own solar system, there is a very, very powerful message that says here's how we should look for alien life, small and big. So yeah, microbes are talking and we are listening, and they are taking us, one planet at a time and one moon at a time, towards their big brothers out there. And they are telling us about diversity, they are telling us about abundance of life, and they are telling us how this life has survived thus far to reach civilization, intelligence, technology and, indeed, philosophy.”

Nathalie Cabrol (1963) French American astrobiologist

Source: How Mars might hold the secret to the origin of life https://www.ted.com/talks/nathalie_cabrol_how_mars_might_hold_the_secret_to_the_origin_of_life (March 2015)

Life, Intelligence, Time

“[W]e understand that if the child were to give in to the overpowering character of reality and experience he would not be able to act with the kind of equanimity we need in our non-instinctive world. So one of the first things a child has to do is to learn to “abandon ecstasy,” to do without awe, to leave fear and trembling behind. Only then can he act with a certain oblivious self-confidence, when he has naturalized his world. We say “naturalized” but we mean unnaturalized, falsified, with the truth obscured, the despair of the human condition hidden, a despair that the child glimpses in his night terrors and daytime phobias and neuroses. This despair he avoids by building defenses; and these defenses allow him to feel a basic sense of self-worth, of meaningfulness, of power. They allow him to feel that he controls his life and his death, that he really does live and act as a willful and free individual, that he has a unique and self-fashioned identity, that he is somebody—not just a trembling accident germinated on a hothouse planet that Carlyle for all time called a “hall of doom.””

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

We called one’s life style a vital lie, and now we can understand better why we said it was vital: it is a necessary and basic dishonesty about oneself and one’s whole situation. This revelation is what the Freudian revolution in thought really ends up in and is the basic reason that we still strain against Freud We don’t want to admit that we arerevelation is what the Freudian revolution in thought really ends up in and is the basic reason that we still strain against Freud. We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our own lives. We don’t want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which support us. This power is not always obvious. It need not be overtly a god or openly a stronger person, but it can be the power of an all-absorbing activity, a passion, a dedication to a game, a way of life, that like a comfortable web keeps a person buoyed up and ignorant of himself, of the fact that he does not rest on his own center. All of us are driven to be supported in a self-forgetful way, ignorant of what energies we really draw on, of the kind of lie we have fashioned in order to live securely and serenely. Augustine was a master analyst of this, as were Kierkegaard, Scheler, and Tillich in our day. They saw that man could strut and boast all he wanted, but that he really drew his “courage to be” from a god, a string of sexual conquests, a Big Brother, a flag, the proletariat, and the fetish of money and the size of a bank balance.
Human Character as a Vital Lie
The Denial of Death (1973)

Despair, Life, Confidence, Time

“People ask me why I became vegan. I went #plantbased overnight after finding out it’s the single most influential thing you can do for the planet. Having that knowledge I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror if I’d continued to eat meat. I didn’t want to be a part of.”

Izabella Miko (1981) Polish actress and dancer

Tweet https://twitter.com/IzabellaMiko/status/1047571250061692928 (October 3, 2018)

Knowledge, People, Parting

“I try to think about ways to draw the public to the story of the planet, and seashells are something we’ve always wanted to listen to. It’s sort of irresistible to pick a shell up to the ear and listen to what it’s trying to tell us — and they are telling us a profound story about what we’re doing to the ocean. The tiniest shells are beginning to disintegrate in the acidifying sea. It really is a metaphor for something much bigger.”

Cynthia Barnett (1966) American journalist

Source: https://www.jou.ufl.edu/2019/01/30/cynthia-barnett-we-can-change-and-its-up-to-us-to-do-so/

Way, Sea, Drawing, Thinking

“In the United States, such collusion with the destroyers of human life on Planet Earth is written all over their actions. It’s beyond evident in the appointment of former oil and gas lobbyists and fellow travelers to positions of power... We are, of course, talking about nothing short of the ultimate crime, but on any given day of our lives, you’d hardly notice that it was underway. Even for an old man like me, it’s a terrifying thing to watch humanity make a decision, however inchoate, to essentially commit suicide. In effect, there is now a suicide watch on Planet Earth. Let’s hope the kids can make a difference.”

Tom Engelhardt (1944) American writer

Suicide Watch on Planet Earth, CounterPunch, https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/26/suicide-watch-on-planet-earth/(26 April 2019)

Life, Hope, Decision, Travel

“To sum up, no one should ever claim that we Americans aren’t “at home” in the world. We’re everywhere, remarkably well funded and well armed and ready to face off against the aggressors and provocateurs of this planet. Just one small suggestion: thank the troops for their service if you want, and then, as most Americans do, go about your business as if nothing were happening in those distant lands. As we head into election season 2020, however, just don’t imagine that we’re the good guys on Planet Earth. As far as I can tell, there aren’t many good guys left.”

Tom Engelhardt (1944) American writer

We’re Not the Good Guys, CounterPunch, https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/04/were-not-the-good-guys/ (4 July 2019)

Home, Imagination, Business, Season

“[In] Ancient Babylon... they were trying to predict three kinds of things.... where the planets would be, what the weather would be like, and who would win or lose a certain battle; and they had no idea which of these things would be more predictable than the other.”

Stephen Wolfram (1959) British-American computer scientist, mathematician, physicist, writer and businessman

Stephen Wolfram: Fundamental Theory of Physics, Life, and the Universe (Sep 15, 2020)

Idea, Weather

“[W]e live... in the pockets of reducibility. ...I should have realized [that] very many years ago, but didn't... [I]t could very well be that everything about the world is computationally irreducible and completely unpredictable, but... in our experience of the world there is at least some amount of prediction we can make. ...[T]hat's because we have ...chosen a slice of ...how to think about the universe, in which we can... sample a certain amount of computational reducibility, and that's... where we exist. ...It may not be the whole story about how the universe is, but it is that part of the universe that we care about and ...operate in. ...In science, that's been ...a very special case ...science has chosen to talk a lot about places where there is this computational reducibility... The motion of the planets can be ...predicted. The... weather is much harder to predict. ...[S]cience has tended to concentrate itself on places where its methods have allowed successful prediction.”

Stephen Wolfram (1959) British-American computer scientist, mathematician, physicist, writer and businessman

Stephen Wolfram: Fundamental Theory of Physics, Life, and the Universe (Sep 15, 2020)

Success, Universe, Thinking, Weather

“I constantly need music, that music that flows in my veins, making the whole planet tremble, pure and divine substance of my life.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Ho costantemente bisogno di musica, di quella musica che scorre nelle vene facendo tremare l'intero pianeta, pura e divina sostanza della mia vita.
Source: prevale.net

Music, Life, Making love

“My purpose on this planet is to live up to my potential, everything else just adds to the experience.”

Isaac Mashman (2000) businessman, speaker

“Suppose we human beings were hunted with traps by a race of giants loo feet high, very ingenious, and absolutely without conscience so far as their treatment of us was concerned. Suppose that, in spite of all our vigilance, we were continually falling into these traps, which were hidden all about us, and compelled in order to escape to eat off our own arms or legs. Suppose that even then one out of every five of us was so ill-starred as to be caught a second time, and ended up, after hours or days of unspeakable agony, by having his head smashed into a jelly by a big club. Suppose we were absolutely helpless in the matter, and that our victimisers had no higher purpose in inflicting these fiendish outrages than to get a scalp or a jawbone to dangle about their demoniacal necks. Suppose, finally, in order to complete the analogy, that these people imagined themselves to be highly civilised and enlightened. What sort of an opinion do you think we would have in the course of ages as to the real character of these people and of their fitness to be the models and superintendents of a planet?”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Cost of a Skin, pp. 70–71

Imagination, Time, Star, People

“When we consider that resources will one day be mined from planets other than the earth, that matter and energy are totally interchangeable, and that basic chemical elements can be transmuted, we realize that resource seeds are so abundant that they do not impose practical limitations on the creation of wealth at all.”

Mary Ruwart (1949) American scientist and libertarian activist

Source: Healing Our World: In An Age of Aggression, (2003), p. 19

Wealth

“In the mysterious way in which life is given to us in evolution on this planet, it pushes in the direction of its own expansion. We don’t understand it simply because we don’t know the purpose of creation; we only feel life straining in ourselves and see it thrashing others about as they devour each other. Life seeks to expand in an unknown direction for unknown reasons.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

Psychology and Religion: What Is the Heroic Individual?
The Denial of Death (1973)

Way, Life, Feeling, Understanding

“If we want to give back to future generations what we have taken for granted, we have to understand the planet as a natural resource bank account. In other words, we need to start investing in depleted capital and live off the interest instead. There are plenty of individuals from both countries who are conscious of these things and trying to do better. But, we need to do much better as a global society. All countries need to communicate the importance of this life support system and protect this web of life. We must be able to live with the planet and not on it.”

Fabien Cousteau (1967) French filmmaker and oceanographer

Deep Sea Rendez-Vous with Fabien Cousteau https://beautyandwellbeing.com/well-being/deep-sea-rendez-vous-with-celine-fabien-cousteau/ (September 30, 2020)

Understanding, Country, Communication, Support

“An observer studying the Solar system dispassionately, and finding himself capable of bringing the four giant planets to his notice, could reasonably say that the Solar system consisted of one star, four planets, and some traces of debris.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"Worlds In Order" in The Secret of the Universe (1992), p. 63
General sources

Study, Star

“Here we are, in one little world, one planet... Everybody agrees that world government is the logical solution...”

Garry Davis (1921–2013) American actor turned peace activist (1921-2013)

As quoted in Garry Davis Cult, Life (Jan 24, 1949)

World

“The planets are of two kinds. Those which are sacred planets, and those which are non-sacred. The Earth is not one of the sacred planets... Sacred planets have no evil.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980)

Evil

“This planet itself is a living, breathing, incarnating entity. It does not incarnate in exactly the same way as we do, but does so in relation to the Plan of our Solar Logos.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: The Great Approach (2001) p. 9

Way

“The whole planet is the museum!”

Genesis P-Orridge (1950) British musician and writer

Speaking with Douglas Rushkoff (Arthur No. 2 c.Jan 2003) http://arthurmag.com/2010/10/28/douglas-rushkoff-and-genesis-p-orridge-conversation-2003/

“Believe me, if there's an animal misbehaving on this planet, I know about it.”

Kees Moeliker (1960) Dutch biologist

How a dead duck changed my life https://www.ted.com/talks/kees_moeliker_how_a_dead_duck_changed_my_life (February 2013)

Animals

“By far the most dangerous animal on the planet was an invasive species of ape.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016), Chapter 17 (p. 386)

Animals

“Need to tell myself I don't care
Need to tell myself you're not there
Need some air, need some space
Need some air
The way I'm feeling I just don't care.
This is Starship Trooper living on a whole other planet
Reboot computer”

Example (musician) (1982) English rapper and singer

"Natural Disaster" (song), with Laidback Luke Disaster", Official video on YouTube)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q28e-Z9TAdU("Natural (+ "Natural Disaster", a lyrics version on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9Bh297hFrg Studio albums, Playing in the Shadows (2011)

Way, Feeling

“According to the astrological signs, all the humans are born outside of our planet Earth.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Remember to love the rain as much as you love the sun. We are the only planet to know and experience both.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Sun, Love

“Human beings are of course unique. They have, perched between their ears, the most complicated biological machine on the planet. But complexity is not everything, and it is not the goal of evolution. Every species on the planet is unique. Uniqueness is a commodity in oversupply.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 2 “Species” (p. 25)

“It seems like in this beautiful planet we live in, everything has a place, but our generation is in a grey area where no one can assure us that we’ll be safe in a couple of years. We have been forced to fight for real climate action because we are the ones that will lose the most.”

Massin Akandouch (2001) Amazigh activist

April 30, 2020. Interview for UNILAD article. https://www.unilad.co.uk/featured/air-pollution-might-have-dropped-but-climate-change-is-still-ravaging-our-planet/

Beauty, Fight

“Ultimately the galaxy, indeed the sum of the universe in its entirety, was mostly nothing; average it all out and it made a pretty good vacuum. But within the foci of matter there were the systems, the stars and planets and habitats—what a cornucopia of life was there!”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Matter (2008), Chapter 10 “A Certain Lack” (p. 167)

Star, Universe, Life

“[…] Abrupt climate change may be normal in the planet's history, or, to state it differently, that the earth's climate is inherently very unstable. The period in which human civilization developed has been if anything, an anomalous ten-thousand-year epoch of remarkable stability.”

James Howard Kunstler book The Long Emergency

Source: The Long Emergency (2005), Chapter 5, p. 149.

History, Change

“We say no more blah blah blah. No more exploitation of people and the nature and the planets … no more whatever the fuck they are doing inside there.”

Greta Thunberg (2003) Swedish climate change activist

2021, Response to COP26 (November 2021)

People, Nature

“We are sleepwalking into a mass extinction event - the sixth in our planet's history, and the first to be caused by human economic activity. The rate of extinction is now 1,000 times faster than before the Industrial Revolution.”

Jason Hickel (1982) author

Source: Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (2021), Welcome to the Anthropocene, p. 8

History, Time

“The people of Earth did not understand that humans were part of a worldwide organism, that something as tiny as a cluster of bacteria could mean the difference between life and death for every living thing, the difference between a functioning, flourishing planet and a desolation.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Margarets (2007), Chapter 32, “I Am Gretamara/On Mars” (p. 272)

People, Understanding, Life, Death

“You carne in to this world with enough light to find your way out of the dark, enough kindness to save a soul, enough love to shift a planet. I1 Don't worry, you are equipped vith all you could ever need Look with in, you are drenched in magic. Alexis karpouzos”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://gr.pinterest.com/pin/688628599258307225/

Soul, Light, World, Way

“Even in comparison to out sister world [Venus], our home planet is exceptional.”

Shawna Vogel science writer

Naked Earth: the New Geophysics (1995)

Home, World, Sister

“Every animal has a particular purpose on the planet. We may not like some of those purposes, but they're all necessary for us to exist.”

Jack Hanna (1947) American zoologist

Source: Jack Hanna Interview: Inside the Mind and Heart of the Animal Kingdom's Best Friend https://smashinginterviews.com/interviews/newsmakers/jack-hanna-interview-inside-the-mind-and-heart-of-the-animal-kingdoms-best-friend (4 May 2014)

Animals

“Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on? Grade the ground first. If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him ... he will be surrounded by grandeur. He is in the condition of a healthy and hungry man, who says to himself, — How sweet this crust is!
Letter to Harrison Blake (20 May 1860); published in Familiar Letters (1865)

Housing, Boy, Learning, Men

“If you want to live a purpose filled life, what better goal to guide your career is there than saving the planet?”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Future Proofing You (2021)

Life

“We (Ecuador) may be a small territory... but the planet (earth) is also ours.”

Guillermo Lasso (1955) President of Ecuador

Source: Guillermo Lasso (2021) cited in: " Ecuador expands sea life protections around Galapagos https://phys.org/news/2022-01-ecuador-sea-life-galapagos.html" in phys.org, 15 January 2022.

“Exploring the infinitely small particles to better protect our planet and understand its major challenges is essential, so that our decisions live up to the hopes of future generations.”

Stéphane Valeri (1962) Monaco politician

Source: Stéphane Valeri (2021) cited in: " High Level Visit to IAEA Monaco Laboratories Highlights Nuclear Techniques to Protect People, the Ocean https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/high-level-visit-to-iaea-monaco-laboratories-highlights-nuclear-techniques-to-protect-people-the-ocean" in International Atomic Energy Agency, 4 March 2021.

Understanding, Future, Hope, Decision

Quotes about planet page 13

Quotes about planet
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