The Sacred Balance Quotes

“Every breath is a sacrament, an affirmation of our connection with all other living things, a renewal of our link with our ancestors and a contribution to generations yet to come. Our breath is a part of life's breath, the ocean of air that envelopes the earth.”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“The environment is so fundamental to our continued existence that it must transcend politics and become a central value of all members of society.”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“Eco” comes from the Greek word oikos, meaning home. Ecology is the study of home, while economics is the management of home. Ecologists attempt to define the conditions and principles that govern life’s ability to flourish through time and change. Societies and our constructs, like economics, must adapt to those fundamentals defined by ecology. The challenge today is to put the “eco” back into economics and every aspect of our lives.”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“As we distance ourselves further from the natural world, we are increasingly surrounded by and dependent on our own inventions. We become enslaved by the constant demands of technology created to serve us.”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“Our identity includes our natural world, how we move through it, how we interact with it and how it sustains us.”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“There is no environment "out there" that is separate from us. We can't manage our impact on the environment if we are our surroundings. Indigenous people are absolutely correct: we are born of the earth and constructed from the four sacred elements of earth, air, fire and water. (Hindus list these four and add a fifth element, space.)”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“You needn’t be confused about which “expert” to believe, just talk to elders around you, people who have lived in your part of the world for the past seventy or eighty years. Ask them what they remember about the air, about other species, about the water, about neighbourhoods and communities, about caring between people and the ways they communicated and entertained each other. Our elders tell us of the immense changes that have occurred in the span of a single human life; all you have to do is to project the rate of change they have experienced into the future to get an idea of what might be left in the coming decades. Is this progress? Is this way of life sustainable?”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“Benjamin Franklin, said: “Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“At first you are awed by the splendour, by the beauty, of the planet and then you look down and you realize that this one planet is the only thing we have. Every time the sun comes up and goes down… and for us that’s sixteen times a day… you see a thin, thin, thin layer just above the surface, maybe 10 or 12 kilometres thick. That is the atmosphere of the Earth. That is it. Below that is life. Above it is nothing. JULIE PAYETTE, Canadian astronaut”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“The place where we spend most of our lives moulds our priorities and the way we perceive our surroundings. A human-engineered habitat of asphalt, concrete and glass reinforces our belief that we lie outside of and above nature, immune from uncertainty and the unexpected of the wild.”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“The nation that values youth and thinness is the most obese in the world. The place where the dollar rules has more diparity between rich and poor than any other industrialized nation. Although peace is one of its highest ideals, the United States is well known for violence. More people use drugs regularly in this land of opportunity than in the rest of the world put together. And more people per capita are imprisoned in the land of the free than in any other Western country.”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“Albert Einstein was asked one day by a friend “Do you believe that absolutely everything can be expressed scientifically?” “Yes, it would be possible,” he replied, “but it would make no sense. It would be description without meaning—as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation in wave pressure.” RONALD W. CLARK, Einstein: The Life and Times”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“We know that deprivation of love can kill people. What are the effects of being deprived of a living environment?”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“Life thrives on life;”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“There is no environment “out there” that is separate from us. We can’t manage our impact on the environment if we are our surroundings. Indigenous people are absolutely correct: we are born of the Earth and constructed from the four sacred elements of earth, air, fire and water. (Hindus list these four and add a fifth element, space.) Once I had finally understood the truth of these ancient wisdoms, I also realized that we are intimately fused to our surroundings and the notion of separateness or isolation is an illusion. Through reading I came to understand that science reaffirms the profundity of these ancient truths over and over again. Looked at as biological beings, despite our veneer of civilization, we are no more removed from nature than any other creature, even in the midst of a large city. Our animal nature dictates our essential”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“Our victories were pyrrhic because we failed to address the values, assumptions and beliefs that underlie our destructive demands and activities. The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If we regard a mountain as a deity rather than a pile of ore, a forest as a sacred grove rather than lumber and pulp, other species as our biological kin rather than resources, the planet as our mother and life-giver and not an opportunity, then our actions will reflect far greater humility, respect and responsibility.”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

“By being loved the power is released in the infant to love others. This is a critically important lesson that, as human beings, we need to understand and learn: that the cultivation of the growth and the development of love in the child should be its natural birthright.”
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature