Environmental wisdom through the ages

Sustainability may be a relatively new movement, but its core values date to earlier than the founding of our country. Environmental-minded people from Thoreau to DiCaprio have espoused responsible stewardship and conservation of natural resources.

Check out the quotes below and match them to the speakers. You may be surprised at the common thread of thought weaving through American history. (Answers below.)

1. “To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.”

2. “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.”

3. “I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?”

4. “We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.”

5. “The command ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ was promulgated, according to our authorities, when the population of the world consisted of two people.”

A. Thomas Fuller (1732)
B. Chief Seattle (1855)
C. Theodore Roosevelt (1907)
D. William Ralph Inge (1931)
E. Robert Redford (1985)

Source: QuoteGarden.com

Answers: 1-C, 2-B, 3-E, 4-A, 5-D.