Hold up a mirror and ask yourself what you are capable of doing, and what you really care about. Then take the initiative - don't wait for someone else to ask you to act.
Sylvia EarleRead
Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe. There's no place that we know about that can support life as we know it, not even our sister planet, Mars, where we might set up housekeeping someday, but at great effort and trouble we have to recreate the things we take for granted here.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Earth is unique in its ability to support life, emphasizing its value compared to other planets.
In this quote, Sylvia Earle highlights the extraordinary nature of Earth as a life-sustaining ecosystem. She points out the challenges and efforts required to replicate Earth's life-supporting conditions on other planets, like Mars, underscoring the importance of appreciating our home planet and the complexity of its ecosystems.
Themes
EarthEcosystemNatureLifeMarsUniqueness
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about climate change, you might say: 'As Sylvia Earle reminds us, Earth stands out in the universe for its ability to support life.'
More from Sylvia Earle
All quotes →I'm haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls 'tomorrow's child,' asking why we didn't do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time. Well, now is that time.
Sylvia EarleRead
Even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take, every drop of water you drink, every bite you consume. Everyone, everywhere is inextricably connected to and utterly dependent upon the existence of the sea.
Sylvia EarleRead
There is a terribly terrestrial mindset about what we need to do to take care of the planet-as if the ocean somehow doesn't matter or is so big, so vast that it can take care of itself, or that there is nothing that we could possibly do that we could harm the ocean...We are learning otherwise.
Sylvia EarleRead
No water, no life. No blue, no green.
Sylvia EarleRead
I have come up at the end of a dive, and the boat was not where I left it. I had to take care of a buddy who did panic. But I was confident the boat would come back.
Sylvia EarleRead
Similar quotes
Deliberate cruelty to our defenceless and beautiful little cousins is surely one of the meanest and most detestable vices of which a human being can be guilty.
William Ralph IngeRead
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
Henry David ThoreauRead
If you manage to stop the timber industry from cutting this forest, they'll cut that forest. If you stop oil drilling here, they'll go drill there.
Woody HarrelsonRead
And there are my cats, engaged in a ritual that goes back thousands of years, tranquilly licking themselves after the meal. Practical animals, they prefer to have others provide the food ... some of them do. There must have been a split between the cats who accepted domestication and those who did not.
William S. BurroughsRead
We can hold back neither the coming of the flowers nor the downward rush of the stream; sooner or later, everything comes to its fruition.
Li Ching-YuenRead
The woods decay, the woods decay and fall.
Alfred Lord TennysonRead