100 Amazing Sustainable Quotes to Inspire You

If you follow me on Instagram you’ll know that I love sharing quotes every Tuesday. In particular I love really inspiring quotes in general and therefore I thought I would put together a blog post with 100 amazing sustainable quotes that I’ve come across over the past few years.

You might notice that there are quite a few quotes from the same individuals, such as; Muhatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein and Greta Thunberg as some examples. I make no apologies for this, they have just said a lot of inspiring things.

Alternatively, you can read more inspiration in the 100+ vegan quotes blog post.

100 Amazing Sustainable Quotes

1. My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour and some style.” – Maya Angelou

2. “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” – Will Rogers

3. “The good man is the friend of all living things.” – Mahatma Gandhi

4.”The ultimate test of man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations, whose words of thanks will not be heard.” – Gaylord Nelson

5. “The Earth is fine a fine place and worth fighting for.” – Ernest Hemingway

6. “The Earth is what we all have in common.” – Wendell Berry

7. “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” – Albert Einstein

8. “Every sustainable and ethical choice you make, DOES matter!”

Rainbow Vegans Rock

9. “I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.” – John Muir

10. “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

11. “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” – Dr Martin Luther King Jr

12. “You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Jane Goodall

13. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

14. “We have lost contact with reality, the simplicity of life.” – Paulo Coelho

15. “You cannot do all the good that the world needs, but the world needs all the good that you can do.” – Shelbizleee

16. “There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we can could use.” – Mother Teresa

17. “Often, the greater our ignorance about something, the greater our resistance to change.” – Marc Bekoff

18. “There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness.” – Mahatma Gandhi

19. “I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.” – Aldo Leopold

20. “I’m a vegan. I respect the environment and I do my best to spread the importance of such an issue.” – Jared Leto

21. “The Earth does not belong to us: we belong to the Earth.” – Chief Seattle

22. “The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them.” – Paul Hawken

23. “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates

24. “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” – Edmund Burke

25. The world is changed by your example, not your opinion.” – Paulo Coelho

26. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

27. “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.” – Dalai Lama

28. “What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.” – Chris Maser

29. “Climate change is no longer a doomsday prophecy, it’s a reality. ” – Astrid Noklebye Heiberg

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31. “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” – Albert Einstein

32. “Sustainability is a political choice, not a technical one. It’s not a question of whether we can be sustainable, but whether we choose to be.” – Gary Lawrence

34. “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” – Maya Angelou

35. “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” – Robert Swan

36. “Surely it is our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth.” – Sir David Attenborough

37. “The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.” – Ross Perot

38. “Building a world where we meet our own needs without denying future generations a healthy society is not impossible, as some would assert. The question is where societies choose to put their creative efforts.” – Christopher Flavin

39. “We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.” – Thomas Fuller

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41. “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” – Robert Swan

42. “Calling it climate change is rather limiting. I would rather call it the everything change.” – Margaret Atwood

43. “The more we focus on individual action and neglect systemic change, the more we’re just sweeping leaves on a windy day” – Mary Heglar

44. “It is our collective and individual responsibility to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live.” – Dalai Lama

45. “The greatest danger to our future is apathy.” – Jane Goodall

46. “We can’t just consume our way to a more sustainable world.” – Jennifer Nini

47. “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.” – Marshall McLuhan

48. “We are living on this planet as if we had another one to go to.” – Terri Swearingen

49. “Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge.” – Thomas Edison

50. “Refuse what you do not need; Reduce what you do need; Reuse by using reusables; Recycle what you cannot refuse, reduce, or reuse; and Rot (compost) the rest” – Bea Johnson

51. “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” – Howard Zinn

52. “The future will be green or not at all.”- Jonathon Porritt

“Adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.”
But I don’t want your hope.
I don’t want you to be hopeful.
I want you to panic.
I want you to feel the fear I feel every day.
And then I want you to act.
I want you to act as you would in a crisis.
I want you to act as if our house is on fire.
Because it is.”

Greta Thunberg

54. “There is no such thing as ‘away’. So, when we throw anything away, it must go somewhere.” – Annie Leonard

55. “Because we don’t think about future generations, they will never forget us.” – Henrik Tikkanen

56. “He that plants trees loves others besides himself.”– Thomas Fuller

57. “Buy less, choose well, make it last.” – Vivienne Westwood

58. The strongest governments on earth cannot clean up pollution by themselves. They must rely on each ordinary person, like you and me, on our choices, and on our will.” – Chai Jing

59. “If we pollute the air, water and soil that keep us alive and well, and destroy the biodiversity that allows natural systems to function, no amount of money will save us.” – David Suzuki

60. “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” – Mahatma Gandhi

61. “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” – Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

62. “The most sustainable item is the one you already own”. – Wendy Graham

63. If we want to move towards a low-polluting, sustainable society, we need to get consumers to think about their purchases. – David Suzuki

64. “It is one world. And it’s in our care. For the first time in the history of humanity, for the first time in 500 million years, one species has the future in the palm of its hands.” – Sir David Attenborough

65. “What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on.”– Henry David Thoreau

66. “Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.” – Greta Thunberg

67.“You have to hold yourself accountable for your actions, and that’s how we’re going to protect the Earth.” – Julia Hill

68. “Our life is frittered away by detail…Simplify, simplify, simplify! Simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.” – Henry Thoreau

69. We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.”- Barbara Ward

70. “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop”. – Mother Teresa

71. “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” – Native American Proverb

72. “Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites.” – William Ruckelshaus

73. “Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.” – Stewart Udall

74. “Spend some time outdoors exploring where you live. When you love your home, you’ll fight harder to protect it.” – Kira Simpson

75. “An act of violence against nature should be judged as severely as that against society or another person.” – Dr Michael W Fox

76. “Your silence is almost worst of all.” – Greta Thunberg

77. “Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” – Cree Indian Proverb

78. “Don’t wait for change. Ask for it.” – Bea Johnson

79. “Our ancestors did great work for humanity. What will we do for the next generations?” – Lailah Gifty Akita

80. “Hope doesn’t come from words. Hope only comes from actions.” – Greta Thunberg

81. “21st Century choice: Look after our planet, and it will look after us, or don’t and face the consequences” – Phil Harding

82. “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.” – Rachel Carson

83. “Reducing our levels of consumption will not be a sacrifice but a bonus if we simply redefine the meaning of the word ‘success.” – David Wann

84. “Unless we are willing to encourage our children to reconnect with and appreciate the natural world, we can’t expect them to help protect and care for it.” – David Suzuki

85. “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” – John Muir

86. “If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.” – Maurice Maeterlinck

87. “Because, underneath all of this is the real truth we have been avoiding: climate change isn’t an “issue” to add to the list of things to worry about, next to health care and taxes. It is a civilizational wake-up call. A powerful message—spoken in the language of fires, floods, droughts, and extinctions—telling us that we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing this planet. Telling us that we need to evolve.” – Naomi Klein

88.  “You wouldn’t think you could kill an ocean, would you? But we’ll do it one day. That’s how negligent we are.” – Ian Rankin

89. “People would rather believe than know.” – Edward O Wilson

90. “Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.” – Aldo Leopold

91. “Being green is more than just buying ‘eco’. It is an unshakable commitment to a sustainable lifestyle.” – Jennifer Nini

92. “The best way to predict future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker

93. “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” – Aldo Leopold

94. “Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life.” – George Monbiot

95. “How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can’t destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing. Why don’t they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us?” – Paulo Coelho

96. “Understand: the task of an activist is not to negotiate systems of power with as much personal integrity as possible–it’s to dismantle those systems.” – Lierre Keith

97. “If civilization is to survive, it must live on the interest, not the capital, of nature.” – Ronald Wright

98. “Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.” – Wendell Berry

99. “Be nice to the environment. Be nice to animals. Be nice to people. If you do that, you will leave a mark on the world.” – Enock Maregesi

100. “In much of the rest of the world, rich people live in gated communities and drink bottled water. That’s increasingly the case in Los Angeles where I come from. So that wealthy people in much of the world are insulated from the consequences of their actions.” – Jared Diamond

I hope you enjoyed these 100 amazing sustainable quotes. I have to admit that I had a lot of fun putting this post together and I feel like it’s completely selfish because I now have plenty of quotes to repurpose for my Instagram weekly quote! Nonetheless, I hope you found some inspiring quotes in here to make you feel positive about the future of our planet.

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