Anti-civ and environmental quotes

I'm sorry to be depressing yet again, but I've found lots of really cool anti-civ and/or environmental quotes lately, and I wanted to share them.

"The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the rest of creation. This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just the way Hitler’s mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe. But in the end this mythology is not deeply satisfying. The Takers are a profoundly lonely people. The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it like an army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness.” Daniel Quinn

“For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.” Derrick Jensen

"Having long laid waste our own sanity, and having long forgotten what it feels like to be free, most of us too have no idea what it’s like to live in the real world. Seeing four salmon spawn causes me to burst into tears. I have never seen a river full of fish. I have never seen a sky darkened for days by a single flock of birds (I have, however, seen skies perpetually darkened by smog). As with freedom, so too the extraordinary beauty and fecundity of the world itself: It’s hard to love something you’ve never known. It’s hard to convince yourself to fight for something you may not believe has ever existed." Derrick Jensen

"Even now, we hardly love the Earth or see with eyes or listen any longer with our ears, and we scarcely feel our hearts beat before they break in protest." Stanley Diamond

"We have been too kind to those who are destroying the planet. We have been inexcusably, unforgivably, insanely kind." Derrick Jensen

"I should really like to think there's something wrong with me —
Because, if there isn't then there's something wrong,
Or at least, very different from what it seemed to be,
With the world itself — and that's much more frightening!" T.S.Eliot

"The only measure by which we will be judged by the people who come after is the health of the land base, because that is what is going to support them. They are not going to give a shit whether or not we were pacifists; they are not going to give a shit if we supported Israel or we didn't support Israel; whether we voted green or democrat or republican or not at all. What they are going to care about is whether they can drink the water, whether they can breathe the air, whether the land can support them. One of the important questions is to ask what does the land need from you." Derrick Jensen

"How is it conceivable that all our lauded technological progress--our very civilization--is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal?" Albert Einstein


You know, many people find learning about the type of stuff I read about depressing, but I don't. And surprisingly, many, if not most, green anarchists feel the same way. Or I shouldn't say that. It is depressing, but it doesn't affect my overall happiness, and neither does it affect the overall happiness of other green anarchists I know. More than anything else, I find the knowledge freeing.

Peace,
Idzie