Quotes on Sustainable Development

The world is a sacred vessel. It should not be meddled with. It should not be owned. If you try to meddle with it you will ruin it. If you try to own it you will lose it

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.

Humans merely share the Earth. We can only protect the land, not own it.

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

The future of life on earth depends on our ability to take action. Many individuals are doing what they can, but real success can only come if there's a change in our societies and our economics and in our politics. I've been lucky in my lifetime to see some of the greatest spectacles that the natural world has to offer. Surely we have a responsibility to leave for future generations a planet that is healthy, inhabitable by all species

Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development.

Do we have to wait until a disaster overwhelms us before we make the radical changes necessary to protect our world for future generations? That is the vital challenge of sustainable development. If we act now there is much that can be saved which will otherwise disappear forever

...the core values that underpin sustainable development - interdependence, empathy, equity, personal responsibility and intergenerational justice - are the only foundation upon which any viable vision of a better world can possibly be constructed

We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.

We have embarked globally on a path of unsustainable development. Our lifestyles, the way we produce goods and services, are all part of a system that is completely unsustainable. I see solutions to climate change leading to a much larger philosophical shift in the way human society develops. We need a new matrix to define what human progress is.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come... Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own - indeed, to embrace the whole of creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder.

Culture defines who we are and how we see ourselves. A new attitude toward nature provides space for a new attitude toward culture and the role it plays in sustainable development

Surely we have the wit and will to develop economically without despoiling the very environment we depend upon

We have a situation where we are rich really as a world overall, and yet we have the capacity to destroy ourselves, either through nuclear weapons or through environmental degradation, and we allow the life chances of hundreds of millions of people to be destroyed because we haven't found the will to tackle it

We know the problems, and we know the solution: sustainable development. The issue is the political will.

Whatever the short term clashes between protecting the environment and eradicating poverty, medium term and long term it is clear. Unless we grow sustainably, at some point we face catastrophe

We do not have a freehold on the earth, only a full repairing lease

For the first time in human history, society has the capacity, the knowledge and the resources to eradicate poverty

Fifteen per cent of the population believe the moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona and somewhat fewer still believe the Earth is flat. I think they all get together with the global warming deniers on a Saturday night and party