"The two-word definition of sustainability is 'one planet.'" --Mathis
Wackernagel

"Pain is not an evolutionary error." --Mathis Wackernagel

"We do not have an ecological crisis. The ecosphere has a human crisis. Our 'story' about our place in the scheme of things has somehow gone awry in the industrial age..." -- William Rees

"The reconciliation of growth and the environment...is the vast and grand work of the 21st century." --Dan Walters

"There are those who are trying to set fire to the world. We are in danger. There is time only to work slowly. There is no time not to love.--Deena Metzger

"Sustainability is especially ripe for political controversy and opposition because fundamentally it is a new paradigm that represents significant challenges to the status quo. The paradigm of sustainability, with its notions of limitations and carrying capacities confronts dominant paradigms of progress which do not recognize limits to unchecked growth." --Economist Hazel Henderson

"Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a Spirit is manifest in the Laws of the Universe--a Spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we, with our modest powers, must feel humble." --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 separated from the rest-a kind of optical delusion of his 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." -Albert Einstein

"The twenty-first century will be spiritual or it will not be." --Andre Malraux

"For several centuries Western civilization has had a drive for material accumulation, continual extensions of economic power, termed 'progress'...The longing for growth is not wrong. The nub of the problem is how to flip over, as in jujitsu, the magnificent growth energy of modern civilization into a nonacquisitive search for deeper knowledge of self and nature." --Gary Snyder

"We cannot do great things in this life; we can only do small things with great love." --Mother Teresa

"Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy." --Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Gratitude is the highest form of acceptance. Like patience, it is one of the catalytic agents, one of the alchemist's secrets, for turning dross to gold, hell to heaven, death to life. Where there is gratitude we get the teaching. Where there is is resistance we discover only that it keeps us painfully ignorant." --Stephen Levine

"It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings." --Wendell Berry

"The great sea has set me in motion, set me adrift, and I move as a weed in the river. The arch of the sky and mightiness of storms encompasses me, and I am left trembling with joy." --Eskimo song

"The real voyage of discovery consist not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." --Marcel Proust

"No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an unchartered land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit." --Helen Keller

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." --Mahatma Gandhi

Six stages of a project:

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the guilty
5. Punishment of the innocent
6. Praise and honor for the non-participants

"Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction." --Pablo Picasso

"The spoken lie is of no consequence. The silent colossal national lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples--that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at." --Mark Twain, referring to the "national lie" of slavery

"Someday our grandchildren will very likely look back at the individual, selfish control of the wealth of the world by a small elite the same way we view slavery today." --Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Dandson

"Too often, people enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought, never taking a principled stand. True justice will never come until those who are not injured are just as indignant as those who are." --NAACP President Kweisi Mfume

"To see is itself a creative operation, requiring an effort. Everything we see in our daily life is more or less distorted by acquired habits...The effort needed to see things without distortion takes something very like courage." --Henri Matisse

"It often happens that I wake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope." --Pope John XXIII

"I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." --Deuteronomy 30:19

"There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine is drunk." --M.F.K. Fisher

"Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not knows no release from little things, knows not the livid loneliness of fear, nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings." --Amelia Earhart

"Look to this day, for it is life, the very breath of life. In its brief course lie all the realities of your existence: the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty. For yesterday is only a dream and tomorrow is but a vision. But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day." --Ancient Sanskrit Poem

"Look for your other half who walks always next to you and tends to be who you aren't." --Antonio Machado

"There are two groups of people, those who divide people into two groups and those who don't." --Robert Benchley

"'Honesty,' without compassion and understanding, is not honesty, but subtle hostility." --Dr. Rose N. Franzblau

"Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I am permitted to hold for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." --George Bernard Shaw

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." --George Bernard Shaw

"Life is short. Work only pleases those who will never understand it. Idleness cannot degrade anybody. It differs greatly from laziness." --Batouala, African Chieftain

"Again and again some people in the crowd wake up,
They have no ground in the crowd,
And they emerge according to much broader laws.
They carry strange customs with them
And demand room for bold gestures,
The future speak ruthlessly through them." --Rainer Maria Rilke

"Life is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects." --Thomas Berry

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose wisely." --Woody Allen

"No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up." --Lily Tomlin