We all moan and groan about the loss of the quality of life through the destruction of our ecology, and yet every one of us, in our own little comfortable ways, contributes daily to that destruction. It's time now to awaken in each one of us the respect and attention our beloved Mother deserves.
Interpretation
We often complain about environmental issues while unknowingly contributing to them.
This quote highlights the hypocrisy in our attitudes towards environmental degradation. While we lament the declining quality of life related to ecological destruction, we often fail to recognize our individual roles in perpetuating it. Ed Asner calls for a collective awakening to the importance of respecting and caring for our planet, which he personifies as 'Mother', emphasizing the need for personal accountability and activism in the face of ecological crisis.
In practice
In a speech about climate change at a local community meeting, you can use this quote to highlight personal responsibility.
Never stand still. Only stand still enough to learn, and once you stop learning in that stance, move off. Always keep yourself engaged, in theater, in whatever job you can get. If you can't get an acting job, then go backstage. Or take tickets. But be around actors because that is where you will primarily learn.
As they used to say 'What if they gave a war and nobody came?' How worthwhile if they declared a day of peace and everybody came.
If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment.
The world was so beautiful when regarded like this, without searching, so simply, in such a childlike way. Moons and stas were beautiful, beautiful were bank and stream, forest and rocks, goat and gold-bug, flower and butterfly. So lovely, so delightful to go through the world this way, so like a child, awake, open to what is near, without distrust.
"Hear! hear!" screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, "winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it."
If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant to look like.
I'd like to see animals removed from the entertainment business. Chimpanzees and apes won't perform unless you beat them. Circuses keep elephants in chains 90 percent of the time. Elephants need freedom of movement. In circuses, they live in cramped quarters, which is not the life intended for them by nature. Some are beaten daily, forced to do ridiculous tricks and robbed of every shred of dignity.
Eventually, my eyes were opened, and I really understood nature. I learned to love at the same time.
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