Sustainable Quotes

The equal and sustainable right of access to the Earth's bounty seems one of the most transcendent truths a human being can contemplate. Yet, this right is missing from the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The fact that this single principle is violated on an ongoing basis is quite possibly the root cause of many, if not most, other human rights violations. ~ Martin Adams

The transition to a low-carbon economy will be one of the defining issues of the 21st century. This plan sets out a route-map for the UK's transition from here to 2020 ... every business, every community will need to be involved. Together we can create a more secure, more prosperous low carbon Britain and a world which is sustainable for future generations. ~ Ed Miliband

When resources are degraded, we start competing for them, whether it is at the local level in Kenya, where we had tribal clashes over land and water, or at the global level, where we are fighting over water, oil, and minerals. So one way to promote peace is to promote sustainable management and equitable distribution of resources. ~ Wangari Maathai

This is about putting education absolutely in the centre of enterprise and then using the traditions of Birmingham to inspire and grow. If you have knowledge and business linked together you will grow well, you go further down the innovative path and actually you create more and more jobs. Those jobs will only be available for people with skills but they will be real sustainable employments. That is how important innovation is. ~ Digby Jones, Baron Jones Of Birmingham

Energy is essential for development, and sustainable energy is essential for sustainable development. ~ Tim Wirth

Thankfully, over time, I have come to realize those skills initially dismissed as "soft" - communicating a vision, providing feedback, or leading a team - are fundamental to everything we try to do in business. You don't create a successful, sustainable, and scalable organization unless you can engage the people within the organization to work together. The "best friend at work" from the ~ Morag Barrett

The Tour (de France) is essentially a math problem, a 2,000-mile race over three weeks that's sometimes won by a margin of a minute or less. How do you propel yourself through space on a bicycle, sometimes steeply uphill, at a speed sustainable for three weeks? Every second counts. ~ Lance Armstrong

Writing and thinking is not economically sustainable. ~ Jaron Lanier

First, how could I protect my team from the incessant demands of the business and achieve what the Agile community now refers to as a "sustainable pace"? And second, how could I successfully scale adoption of an Agile approach across an enterprise and overcome the inevitable resistance to change? ~ David J. Anderson

You don't want your marriage to be sustainable. You want to be evolving, nurturing, learning. ~ Mitchell Joachim

Who would have guessed it possible that waiting is sustainable. A place with its own harvest. ~ Kay Ryan

It's not about the pace, it's about the direction we've set. The pace is of course a function of many factors, including the magnitude of the supply shock. But what's probably more important is the probability of the supply shock translating into sustainable embedded inflation. ~ Marek Belka

Throughout the 64-day campaign, events and activities for peace and nonviolence take place all around the world, highlighting existing peacebuilding initiatives and inspiring new year-round activities for a more peaceful, nonviolent, just and sustainable world. ~ Robert Alan Aurthur

While the priest prayed over me, I thought, "Friendship" was probably a good word to choose, after all. Without people to love and be loved by, I don't imagine faith is very sustainable. ~ Wesley Hill

For a product to really be sustainable, it's really got to deliver the goods for the end user. That drives the whole rest of the equation. ~ Chris Kilham

There is now more pressure on consumers than there has ever been and it is not sustainable. ~ Betty Furness

Population diminishing, even in Japan and Italy, the population is diminishing. When society can reach a sustainable place or gain comfortable income, then people tend to have fewer children. Poverty makes a chain reaction of having many children. So when society reaches some kind of level, then it will turn toward getting a smaller population. ~ Hiroshi Sugimoto

Climate change knows no borders. It will not stop before the Pacific islands and the whole of the international community here has to shoulder a responsibility to bring about a sustainable development. ~ Angela Merkel

Like it or not, the road to Hell is paved with sustainable bamboo flooring. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Women still need higher political representation and to be included at decision making tables in all issues in order for solutions that relates from peace to food, to health, to basic stability in the world. We cannot continue to marginalize half of the population in the world in finding sustainable solutions that are good for all. ~ Zainab Salbi

Limitless material growth is not sustainable or moral. ~ Bryant McGill

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 ~ John Gummer

It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her. ~ Michel De Montaigne

I know quite a few eco designers who build dresses out of old couture gowns. They disassemble, 'upcycle,' and reuse them in extraordinary ways. To me, that's a sustainable way of doing things. ~ Suzy Amis

Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy. ~ Howard Schultz

The U.S. can still maintain research institutions, such as Caltech, that are the envy of the world, yet it would be hubristic and naive to think that this position is sustainable without investing in science education and basic research. ~ Ahmed Zewail

According to Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild, if you're feeling an intense emotion like anxiety or anger, there are two ways to manage it: surface acting or deep acting. Surface acting involves putting on a mask--modifying your speech, gestures, and expressions to present yourself as unfazed...In deep acting, known as method acting in the theater world, you actually become the character you wish to portray. Deep acting involves changing your inner feelings, not just your outer expressions of them...Deep acting turns out to be a more sustainable strategy for managing emotions than surface acting. Research shows that surface acting burns us out: Faking emotions that we don't really feel is both stressful and exhausting. If we want to express a set of emotions, we need to actually experience them. ~ Adam Grant

Real, sustainable community change requires the initiative and engagement of community members. ~ Helene D. Gayle

Without doubt, our inability to design and implement a sustainable economic framework has resulted to our present ranking on the globalization index; a precious market to the productive countries. ~ Tony Osborg

We've become slaves to words like 'local,' 'fresh,' and 'seasonal.' We all want to be Thomas Jefferson's agrarian hero, but sustainable food is a difficult beast. ~ Barton Seaver

Though every nation must do its part to address climate change, developed nations are responsible for the lion's share of carbon pollution in the atmosphere, and they have an obligation to help developing nations transition to a sustainable future. ~ Frances Beinecke

The scarcest resource is not oil, metals, clean air, capital, labour, or technology. It is our willingness to listen to each other and learn from each other and to seek the truth rather than seek to be right ~ Donella Meadows

Not only is this workaholism unnecessary, it's stupid. Working more doesn't mean you care more or get more done. It just means you work more. Workaholics wind up creating more problems than they solve. First off, working like that just isn't sustainable over time. When the burnout crash comes - and it will - it'll hit that much harder. Workaholics miss the point, too. They try to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at them. They try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force. This results in inelegant solutions. ~ Jason Fried

Investment in infrastructure is a long term requirement for growth and a long term factor that will make growth sustainable. ~ Chanda Kochhar

Progressive economic policies lead to a sustainable economy. ~ Keith Ellison

Reaching a general understanding that sustainability is the ultimate issue will finally bring us face-to-face with the political challenge of forging a sustainable society during the next few decades. It is a challenge we can meet if we have the leadership and the political will to do so. ~ Gaylord Nelson

While the Passover narrative [in Exodus] energizes Israel's imagination toward justice, Israel's hard work of implementation of that imaginative scenario was done at Mt. Sinai ... Moses' difficult work at Sinai is to transform the narrative vision of the Exodus into a sustainable social practice that has institutional staying-power, credibility, and authority. ~ Walter Brueggemann

A national investment bank can invest to provide us with the foundations of shared and ecologically sustainable growth: renewing the U.K.'s energy, digital and transport infrastructure which lags woefully behind other major economies. ~ Jeremy Corbyn

No connection is always easy or free of strife, no matter how many minutes a day we meditate. It's how we relate to conflict, as well as to our differing needs and expectations, that makes our relationships sustainable. ~ Sharon Salzberg

The idea that we are going to be able to take our entire society as it currently works and simply change the source of energy and make it sustainable is not actually congruent with reality. ~ Alex Steffen

San Francisco lags behind other communities in providing a vital, vibrant and ecologically sustainable urban canopy, as well as open space in the city. ~ Gavin Newsom

In this ever-changing society, the most powerful and enduring brands are built from the heart. They are real and sustainable. Their foundations are stronger because they are built with the strength of the human spirit, not an ad campaign. The companies that are lasting are those that are authentic. ~ Howard Schultz

Consistent and clear communication creates a dynamic and sustainable culture that is there when your not there. ~ Farshad Asl

For achieving good governance political will is necessary. Good governance is a political process. Though role of civil society is critical, without political will and political process, sustainable good governance cannot be achieved. ~ Narendra Modi

A world where one tenth of the population gets to be extremely wealthy, and six tenths very poor, is not, in the long run, a stable place ~ Bill McKibben

Somehow, the agenda has been put into the form of talking about a set of transitions from state A, the present, to a state B that's sustainable. The problem is that there is no such state. You have to assume that the transitions are going to continue forever and ever and ever. You have to talk about systems that are continuously dynamic, and that are embedded in environments that themselves are continuously dynamic. ~ George Cowan

Humanity's current demand for energy is fundamentally unsustainable. The only feasible choice is to conduct a massive downscaling of all economic, industrial, and political operations. A decentralized, autonomous, and locally-based energy infrastructure is ultimately the only sustainable option. ~ Stacy Pettigrew

Apathy is sustainable only as long as injustice doesn't harm us--and we don't care that it's harming others. Apathy lasts only until injustice knocks on our door, and we're forced to look into its eyes. ~ Ken Wytsma

As wonderful as charity is, that money runs out. It's not sustainable. It lasts for a certain period of time and it's gone. What i really think people need is the opportunity to help themselves. ~ Emma Watson

The Heartbleed problem can be blamed on complexity; all Internet standards become festooned with complicating option sets that no one person can know in their entirety. The Heartbleed problem can be blamed on insufficient investment; safety review for open source code is rarely funded, nor sustainable when it is. The Heartbleed problem can be blamed on poor planning; wide deployment within critical functions but without any repair regime. ~ Dan Geer

With the continued support of citizens who refuse to accept inaction at the expense of future generations, we will lead the world toward a sustainable future. ~ Diana DeGette

~may be we can build a cleaner,better,sustainable,compassionate,efficient USA ~ Ian Somerhalder ~ Ian Somerhalder

Depending on the season, between 20 and 30 percent of my collections contain some sort of eco or sustainable element, whether it's a beautiful organic fabric or a natural dye. And obviously I don't use animal skins or fur of any kind. ~ Stella McCartney

In trying to explain this linkage, I was inspired by a traditional African tool that has three legs and a basin to sit on. To me the three legs represent three critical pillars of just and stable societies. The first leg stands for democratic space, where rights are respected, whether they are human rights, women's rights, children's rights, or environmental rights. The second represents sustainable and equitable management and resources. And the third stands for cultures of peace that are deliberately cultivated within communities and nations. The basin, or seat, represents society and its prospects for development. Unless all three legs are in place, supporting the seat, no society can thrive. Neither can its citizens develop their skills and creativity. When one leg is missing, the seat is unstable; when two legs are missing, it is impossible to keep any state alive; and when no legs are available, the state is as good as a failed state. No development can take place in such a state either. Instead, conflict ensues. ~ Wangari Maathai

Align your activity with your vision. Being consistent and intentional with your daily activities will result in sustainable success. ~ Farshad Asl

Only the shallowest person believes that they can attain true happiness by maximizing their wealth at any cost. In absence of morality, ethics, and a sustainable philosophy to guide us in an ethical search for happiness, we will always perceive life's random countervailing forces of adversity and unpleasantness as inflicting a great personal injustice upon us. Through application of a deeply embedded personal philosophy, we can push back against the negative implications of a life of suffering. We can use a philosophical stance to gain the perspective needed to say 'yes' to all of life, both its rosy path of ineffable joys and a blackened trail of tears. We must learn to accept life as it truly is and not waste precious time in wistfulness. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The best and most sustainable love story for markets is one based on a healthy and dynamic real economy that creates jobs and opportunities for many more people. ~ Mohamed El-Erian

Economic growth which strips out the planet's ecosystems is not sustainable ~ Helen Clark

It is only through developing and maximizing all its natural resources that a sustainable future for Africa and its people can be secured. ~ Nicky Oppenheimer

Fundamentally transforming the foundations of the economy is the biggest contribution we can make towards building a sustainable future. The current economic crisis may be painful, but it will be nothing compared with the crises we will face if we continue to grow in a way that threatens the life-support systems on which we rely ~ Jonathon Porritt

There is no sustainable future for fisheries as long as human populations continue to increase. ~ Paul Watson

The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be only sustainable competitive advantage. ~ Arie De Geus

I really hope that we'll have a sustainable future on this planet, I really do. So I probably geek out mostly about learning more about how potentially we can hopefully make that happen, hopefully we're not too far lost. ~ Ellen Page

There are three ways YOU can GET OUT of abject poverty. The first is inheritance which is always volatile and very scarce. The second is Education which very sustainable. The third and the most EFFECTIVE way is DEATH (or to Die ). But I recommend YOU to Choose Education ~ Oppong Amankwaa

My dream is remaking and reforming a more sustainable, more livable, delicious future. ~ Kate Orff

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

For organisations to become truly sustainable we believe it is essential to create a new organisation model: a more cooperative leader, a new way for people to cooperate inside the organisation and a new way for organisations to be measured by society. ~ Miguel Reynolds Brandao

Not everyone would see a passive public as necessarily a bad thing. There are benefits to limiting political engagement to a minority of highly committed citizens, with the majority involving itself only in elections and other major events. This elitist theory exists as as strand within Western democratic thought, with proponents arguing that modern governance is so complex that over-politicisation of issues and over-participation by the masses is an liability: it would add an irrational element to governance that could undermine democracy. Sustainable democracy instead requires a fairly passive mass, such that most matters are debated and settled within the political elite, at least when things are running smoothly ~ Cherian George

Sustainable- Nutritious Eating/Living has a Higher Purpose. ~ Elizabeth Salamanca-Brosig

Falling prices are driving renewable energy investment in India, which rose 13 per cent last year and is expected to surpass 10 billion dollars in 2015. Adoption of increasingly cost-effective renewables holds the genuine promise of a new age of socio-economic development, powered by clean, increasingly decentralised, and sustainable energy. The opportunity for India is tremendous. ~ Adnan

The profession is never going back to those days when a handful of wealthy people treated publishing like a hobby: one where the business can lose money because the family has lots of it to burn. Frankly, I don't think that model was ever sustainable, and it really only enriched a small number of writers. ~ Victor LaValle

Only through women's full and equal participation in all areas of public and private life can we hope to achieve the sustainable, peaceful and just society promised in the United Nations Charter, ~ Ban Ki-moon

When people begin to define the things that they believe in, based upon the exclusion of all the things that they hate, all that does is eat away at the soul. Define the things that you believe in based upon the pursuit of the the things that you love and then that love should be able to override all those things that you hate. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Denmark should be a green and sustainable society with a visionary climate and energy policy ... The answer to these challenges lies in the way we produce and consume energy and in our ability to adapt our society to climate change. ~ Connie Hedegaard

The world must learn to work together, or finally it will not work at all. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Respect for human rights requires transparent and accountable institutions and governance as well as the effective participation of all individuals and civil society, who are an essential part of realizing social and people-centred sustainable development. ~ Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

Fuel cells create a better automobile that's 50 percent more energy-efficient overall and sustainable from energy and safety perspectives. ~ Larry Burns

There are a lot of products still to be discovered in the world and experimentation, for example with seafood and fish. There are thousands of products that we're not eating right now that maybe will be cultivated in a good agriculture situation, a sustainable, ecological way. Maybe there will be textures or flavors we hadn't even thought of. In the Amazon there are 400 fruits that are not cultivated right now. They're just incredible fruits. Textures, tastes that we don't know right now. ~ Ferran Adria

Switching to 'Renewables' generates jobs, skills, purpose, power, wealth, future, resilience, autonomy, freedom, unity: Sustainable Society ~ Dave Hampton

Our mission, as set forth by the Congress is a critical one: to preserve price stability, to foster maximum sustainable growth in output and employment, and to promote a stable and efficient financial system that serves all Americans well and fairly. ~ Ben Bernanke

It is important what you eat now, what you do now. If we were interested in a sustainable planet where other generations have a right to a decent future, we would not live like this. ~ Sebastiao Salgado

As we pursue our strategies world-wide, we accept a social and environmental responsibility as well. These responsibilities include the promotion of a sustainable economy and recognition of the accountability we have to the economies, environments, and communities where we do business around the world. ~ John F. Smith, Jr.

A Sustainable Agriculture does not deplete soils or people. ~ Wendell Berry

'Sustainable Development' is an oxymoron. 'Development' in all it's senses entails expansion and wanting more. Continual expansion and wanting more are unsustainable. Globally we are approaching the point when the only sustainable way forward is to want less. Indeed, the choice element may be removed from us and we will just have to have less. In the meantime we still have some choices about how to influence our future ~ Don Johnston

There is no ecological architecture, no intelligent architecture and no sustainable architecture - there is only good architecture. There are always problems we must not neglect. For example, energy, resources, costs, social aspects - one must always pay attention to all these. ~ Eduardo Souto De Moura

All questions of right to one side, I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable. I felt this when sitting in the old Ottoman courtyards of Jerusalem, and I felt it even more when I saw the hideous 'Fort Condo' settlements that had been thrown up around the city in order to give the opposite impression. If the statelet was only based on a narrow strip of the Mediterranean littoral (god having apparently ordered Moses to lead the Jews to one of the very few parts of the region with absolutely no oil at all), that would be bad enough. But in addition, it involved roosting on top of an ever-growing population that did not welcome the newcomers. ~ Christopher Hitchens

At a time when we need an urgent national conversation about how schools and curriculum should address the environmental crisis, we're being told that the problems we need to focus on are teacher incompetence, government monopoly, and market competition. The reform agenda reflects the same private interests that are moving to shrink public space-interests that have no desire to raise questions that might encourage students to think critically about the roots of the environmental crisis, or to examine society's unsustainable distribution of wealth and power. ~ Bill Bigelow

Real security, in other words, is inseparable from issues of energy policy; education; public health; preservation of soils, forests, and waters; and broadly based, sustainable prosperity. ~ David W. Orr

For too long we have placed an irrational burden upon our oceans by demanding only a narrow selection of species, which has led to unsustainable fishing and economic practices. If we instead ask the ocean what it is willing to supply, we engage in an inherently more sustainable relationship. ~ Barton Seaver

Capitalism, as practiced, is a financially profitable, non-sustainable aberration in human development. ~ Paul Hawken

I have always been an advocate and was, in my last job at M&S, a supporter of the Al Gore dictum that a sustainable business can be a profitable business. We were the first sizeable company in the U.K. to prove that was the case. ~ Stuart Rose

There are times the lies get to me, times I weary of battering myself against the obstacles of denial, hatred, fear-induced stupidity, and greed, times I want to curl up and fall into the problem, let it sweep me away as it so obviously sweeps away so many others. I remember a spring day a few years ago, a spring day much like this one, only a little more sun, and warmer. I sat on this same couch and looked out this same window at the same ponderosa pine.
I was frightened, and lonely. Frightened of a future that looks dark, and darker with each passing species, and lonely because for every person actively trying to shut down the timber industry, stop abuse, or otherwise bring about a sustainable and sane way of living, there are thousands who are helping along this not-so-slow train to oblivion. I began to cry.
The tears stopped soon enough. I realized we are not so outnumbered. We are not outnumbered at all. I looked closely, and saw one blade of wild grass, and another. I saw the sun reflecting bright off the needles of pine trees, and I heard the hum of flies. I saw ants walking single file through the dust, and a spider crawling toward the corner of the ceiling. I knew in that moment, as I've known ever since, that it is no longer possible to be lonely, that every creature on earth is pulling in the direction of life--every grasshopper, every struggling salmon, every unhatched chick, every cell of every blue whale--and it is only our own fear that sets us apart. ~ Derrick Jensen

Here is an all-too-brief summary of Buffett's approach: He looks for what he calls "franchise" companies with strong consumer brands, easily understandable businesses, robust financial health, and near-monopolies in their markets, like H & R Block, Gillette, and the Washington Post Co. Buffett likes to snap up a stock when a scandal, big loss, or other bad news passes over it like a storm cloud - as when he bought Coca-Cola soon after its disastrous rollout of "New Coke" and the market crash of 1987. He also wants to see managers who set and meet realistic goals; build their businesses from within rather than through acquisition; allocate capital wisely; and do not pay themselves hundred-million-dollar jackpots of stock options. Buffett insists on steady and sustainable growth in earnings, so the company will be worth more in the future than it is today. ~ Benjamin Graham

When you're younger, you feel like work is work and relationships are supposed to be easy. As you get older, you realize you have to work at relationships to make them sustainable. ~ Vince Vaughn

I try to leave a light footprint. I'm involved with Global Green, which aims to educate people about sustainable building and the greening of schools. I try to be aware about the consumption of unnecessary things in a consumptive culture. ~ Walton Goggins

I think we're seeing that the way we've done parenting cannot be sustainable in this generation, for sure. ~ Shefali Tsabary

Changing eating habits in the North is an important link in the chain of events needed to create environmentally sustainable development that meets people's needs. The Beyond Beef campaign is an important step in that direction. ~ Walden Bello

Cities must urge urban planners and architects to reinforce pedestrianism as an integrated city policy to develop lively, safe, sustainable and healthy cities. It is equally urgent to strengthen the social function of city space as a meeting place that contributes toward the aims of social sustainability and an open and democratic society. ~ Jan Gehl

No one person has to do it all but if each one of us follow our heart and our own inclinations we will find the small things that we can do to create a sustainable future and a healthy environment. ~ John Denver

We need a lot of thinking and ideas. We need all the innovators, particularly with the new sustainable technologies - how do we get them to affordability so that people can generate clean energy? ~ Helen Clark