Just as our forefathers saved and invested to build what we, the current generation, are enjoying today, so, too, we must plant trees so that our sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters, can enjoy the shade.
Interpretation
The actions we take today should benefit future generations.
This quote emphasizes the importance of making sacrifices and investments today for the benefit of future generations, similar to how our ancestors worked to create a better life for us. It highlights the idea of stewardship for the environment and the necessity of planting trees, which symbolize growth, sustainability, and the legacy we leave behind for our children and grandchildren.
In practice
During a community meeting about environmental initiatives, one could say: 'Just as our forefathers saved and invested to build what we, the current generation, are enjoying today, we must plant trees today for our future.'
If we did not have a sense of who we were, how we got here, why we want to achieve something - which, on the face of it, on the logic of it, is probably not worth trying - and prove that logic wrong, then you wouldn't succeed; then you would just evaporate.
You need people who have their own views, whose views you respect, whom you can have a productive disagreement with, and work out ideas which you might not have come up with, or who improve on ideas you had.
When people say they don't want a nanny state, they are, in fact, in a conflicted state of mind. On the one hand, they want to do whatever they want and not be stopped. On the other hand, if something goes wrong, they want to be rescued.
You need to have good people: honourable, capable, committed in politics, standing in public office. It's not a guarantee, but it's the ideal we have to aim for.
No government prospers by saying, 'I don't need to do anything. Just by being there, we have made the country thrive.'
We need to think of the future and the planet we are going to leave to our children and their children.
Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.
We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.
I believe climate change is real and that we can save our planet while creating millions of good-paying clean energy jobs.
Though not a natural world by any means, more like a collection of living dioramas, a zoo exists in its own time zone, somewhere between the seasonal sense of animals and our madly ticking watch time.
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