WIST Quotations

Berry, Wendell -- Endorsement blurb for Charles E. Little, The Dying of the Trees (1997)

Dave — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 18:08:50 +0000

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Endorsement blurb for Charles E. Little, The Dying of the Trees (1997)
(Source)

Ehrlich, Paul -- (Attributed)

Dave — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 22:02:32 +0000

In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it perches.

Paul Ehrlich (b. 1932) American conservation biologist and ecologist
(Attributed)

All citations for this I found are from a reference in Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, ch. 13 (2014), to a sign in the American Museum of Natural History's Hall of Biodiversity which "offers a quote from the Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich," giving the above text.

I was unable to find the phrase in Ehrlich's written work, though it could be from a speech, media comment, etc.

In Ehrlich's One with Ninevah: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future (2005), the epigraph for chapter 2 is a quotation from William R. Catton, Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, ch. 2 (1980), regarding Earth's finite non-renewable resources:

This fact puts mankind out on a limb which the activities of modern life are busily sawing off.

This might be the source of a misattribution to Ehrlich, though the context is not quite the same, and the metaphor of sawing off the branch one is sitting on is not unique to Ehrlich or Cotton. More research is needed.

Kolbert, Elizabeth -- The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, ch. 11 (2014)

Dave — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 21:58:19 +0000

Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it’s not clear that he ever really did.

Elizabeth Kolbert (b. 1961) American journalist and author
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, ch. 11 (2014)
(Source)

Diamond, Jared -- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Part 2, ch. 2 (2005)

Dave — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 17:23:38 +0000

The parallels between Easter Island and the whole modern world are chillingly obvious. Thanks to globalization, international trade, jet planes, and the Internet, all countries on Earth today share resources and affect each other, just as did Easter’s dozen clans. Polynesian Easter Island was as isolated in the Pacific Ocean as Earth is today in space. When the Easter Islanders got into difficulties, there was nowhere to which they could flee, nor to which they could turn for help, nor shall we modern Earthlings have recourse elsewhere if our troubles increase. Those are the reasons why people see the collapse of Easter Island society as a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in our own future.

Jared Diamond (b. 1937) American geographer, historian, ornithologist, author
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Part 2, ch. 2 (2005)
(Source)

This is the actual full text from Diamond's book. It is almost universally paraphrased (including the bracketed inclusion) as:

The metaphor is so obvious. Easter Island isolated in the Pacific Ocean -- once the island got into trouble, there was no way they could get free. There was no other people from whom they could get help. In the same way that we on Planet Earth, if we ruin our own [world], we won't be able to get help.

I speculate that this pared-down phrasing was used by Diamond during a speech or seminar about the subject, or an interview about the book, and was then mistakenly identified (and copied) as a quote from the book. For example, at the ASA, CSSA, and SSSA Annual Meetings, Long Beach, California (2010), for example, Diamond is quoted with this near match:

The metaphor is so obvious. Easter Island is isolated in the Pacific Ocean; once the Easter Islanders got into trouble, there was nowhere that they could flee. Just as if, today, we on planet Earth mess up our island planet, there is no other galaxy that we’re going to be able to float off to.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo -- Journal (1840-07-13/14)

Dave — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 04:02:46 +0000

We are all boarders on one table — White man, black man, ox and eagle, bee, & worm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1840-07-13/14)
(Source)

Stern, G. B. -- (Attributed)

Dave — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 12:10:49 +0000

Man is a complex being who makes deserts bloom and lakes die.

G. B. Stern (1890-1973) British writer [Gladys Bronwyn Stern]
(Attributed)

Also attributed (unsourced) to Gil Stern, Gil Scott-Heron, and Lawrence Peter.

Roosevelt, Theodore -- A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open, ch. 10 “Bird Reserves at the Mouth of the Mississippi” (1916)

Dave — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 13:33:45 +0000

Birds should be saved because of utilitarian reasons; and, moreover, they should be saved because of reasons unconnected with any return in dollars and cents. A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful cathedral. The extermination of the passenger pigeon meant that mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims. And to lose the chance to see frigate-birds soaring in circles above the storm, or a file of pelicans winging their way homeward across the crimson afterglow of the sunset, or a myriad terns flashing in the bright light of midday as they hover in a shifting maze above the beach — why, the loss is like the loss of a gallery of the masterpieces of the artists of old time.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901–1909)
A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open, ch. 10 “Bird Reserves at the Mouth of the Mississippi” (1916)
(Source)

Huxley, Aldous -- Island (1962)

Dave — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 13:52:36 +0000

Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it. Rub it in.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
Island (1962)

Berry, Wendell -- Essay (1988), “God and Country,” What Are People For? (1990)

Dave — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:01:42 +0000

The ecological teaching of the Bible is simply inescapable: God made the world because He wanted it made. He thinks the world is good, and He loves it. It is His world; He has never relinquished title to it. And He has never revoked the conditions, bearing on His gift to us of the use of it, that oblige us to take excellent care of it.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Essay (1988), “God and Country,” What Are People For? (1990)
(Source)

Leopold, Aldo -- Round River, “Conservation” (1953)

Dave — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:04:09 +0000

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, “What good is it?” If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) American conservationist, forester, ecologist
Round River, “Conservation” (1953)
(Source)

Berry, Wendell -- The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture, ch. 1 (1977)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only hope.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture, ch. 1 (1977)
(Source)