Corporate responsibility extends not only to the customers, the resources and the workers of the present, but also to those of the future.
Interpretation
Corporate responsibility encompasses obligations to current and future stakeholders.
This quote emphasizes the importance of considering not just immediate responsibilities to customers, resources, and workers, but also the broader impact of corporate actions on future generations. It highlights the necessity for businesses to think long-term and act in ways that safeguard the well-being of people and the planet for those who come after us.
In practice
During a corporate sustainability meeting, this quote can be used to inspire long-term thinking among leadership.
Both the United States and the world economy have already reached - and surpassed - their sustainable physical limits. Ground water is being drawn down, soils eroded, forests cut faster than they grow, fish caught faster than they reproduce, non-renewable fossil fuels burnt without developing substitutes.
There is hardly a place on Earth where people do not log, pave, spray, drain, flood, graze, fish, plow, burn, drill, spill or dump. There is no life zone, with the possible exception of the deep ocean, that we are not degrading.
Speak the truth._x000D_ Speak it loud and often, calmly but insistently,_x000D_ and speak it, as the Quakers say, to power._x000D_ Material accumulation is not the purpose of human existence._x000D_ All growth is not good._x000D_ The environment is a necessity, not a luxury._x000D_ There is such a thing as enough.
No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems arenβt designed to produce them, if we donβt speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.
Like the other great revolutions, an environmental revolution will require sacrifices and lead to enormous gains. It, too, will change the face of the land and human institutions, hierarchies, self-definitions, cultures. It will take centuries. If it happens. There is no guarantee, of course.
There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.
Our life is not given to us like an opera libretto, in which all is written down; but it means going, walking, doing, searching, seeing.... We must enter into the adventure of the quest for meeting God; we must let God search and encounter us.
As he was valiant, I honour him. But as he was ambitious, I slew him.
The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls.
One point of difference between Hinduism and other religions is that in Hinduism we pass from truth to truth-from a lower truth to a higher truth-and never from error to truth.
To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages today that determine success--the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history--with a society that provides opportunities for all.
In the past, I've visited remote places - North Korea, Ethiopia, Easter Island - partly as a way to visit remote states of mind: remote parts of myself that I wouldn't ordinarily explore.
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