Quotes & Sayings About Rainforests

We frequently look into the future of mankind and see dangers. We see if we carry on doing what we are doing in 20 years' time there will be no rainforests left, just to use one example. Looking into the future may be one of the reasons that brains evolved in the first place. — Richard Dawkins

Promoting the use of sustainable and renewable rainforest products can help to stop rainforest devastation. The rainforests are much more valuable alive than cut or burned, providing a steady supply of medicinal plants, fruits, nuts and oils. — Chris Kilham

The world's forests need to be seen for what they are.. giant global utilities, providing essential services to humanity on a vast scale. Rainforests store carbon, which is lost to the atmosphere when they burn, increasing global warming. The life they support cleans the atmosphere of pollutants and feeds it with moisture. They help regulate our climate and sustain the lives of some of the poorest people on this Earth. — Prince Charles

The answer is simple. If we lose the world's forests, we lose the fight against climate change. Rainforests are our Earth's greatest utility - our planet's lungs, thermostat and air-conditioning system. — Michael Somare

Great attention gets paid to rainforests because of the diversity of life there. Diversity in the oceans is even greater. — Sylvia Earle

No sound system. No band. No guitar. No entertainment. No cushioned chairs. No heating or air-con. Nothing but the people of God and the word of God. And strangely, that's enough. God's Word is enough for millions of believers who gather in house churches ... Jungles ... Rainforests, and middle-eastern cities. But is his Word enough for us? — David Platt

Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of rainforests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases? — Dana Rohrabacher

I love all of the ecosystems - mountains, deserts, rainforests. They're beautiful, and nature has so many different flavors to it. — Louie Schwartzberg

Humans are an infant species, a mere 150,000 years old. But, armed with a massive brain, we've not only survived, we've used our wits to adapt to and flourish in habitats as varied as deserts, Arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, wetlands and high mountain ranges. — David Suzuki

The silencing of the rainforests is a double deforestation, not only of trees but a deforestation of the mind's music, medicine and knowledge. — Jay Griffiths

The rainforests hold answers to questions we have yet to ask. — Mark Plotkin

Why is it that no one is excited? I hear people talking in the laundromat about the end of the world, and they're no more excited than if they were comparing detergents. People talk about the destruction of the ozone layer and the death of all life. They talk about the devastation of the rainforests, about deadly pollution that will be with us for thousands and millions of years, about the disappearance of dozens of species of life every day, about the end of speciation itself. And they seem perfectly calm. — Daniel Quinn

When I'm not shooting, I love going on adventures with friends. I love zip-lining through rainforests and different natural habitats, and I love writing music on the side, and I love drinking coffee. I'm a big coffee drinker and go to a lot of cafes and stuff. — Max Schneider

Among the Secoya, clear guidelines regulate preparation of the medicine. They are adamant about this preparation method and insist that the guidelines be followed. I've already discussed some fundamentals of harvesting the plants. When respected, all the elements and subtle factors combine to make a potent and efficacious medicine, necessary for a positive and healing ceremony. — Jonathon Miller Weisberger

In the collision between the remoteness and purity of the rainforest realms and the crassness of consumer culture, the difference is so extreme that for the most part there has been no authentic or practical method for this medicine system as traditionally practiced to integrate and adapt to the changing times. — Jonathon Miller Weisberger

There will be no bananas!" "There will be entire tropical rainforests of bananas! And coconuts!" I gestured to my breasts. "And, hopefully, bananas rubbing against coconuts. — Penny Reid

Humans, as a rule, don't like mad people unless they are good at painting, and only then once they are dead. But the definition of mad, on Earth, seems to be very unclear and inconsistent. What is perfectly sane in one era turns out to be insane in another. The earliest humans walked around naked with no problem. Certain humans, in humid rainforests mainly, still do so. So, we must conclude that madness is sometimes a question of time, and sometimes of postcode.
Basically, the key rule is, if you want to appear sane on Earth you have to be in the right place, wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and only stepping on the right kind of grass. — Matt Haig

Forests ... are in fact the world's air-conditioning system-the very lungs of the planet-and help to store the largest body of freshwater on the planet ... essential to produce food for our planet's growing population. The rainforests of the world also provide the livelihoods of more than a billion of the poorest people on this Earth ... In simple terms, the rainforests, which encircle the world, are our very life-support system-and we are on the verge of switching it off. — Prince Charles

I'm boiling about the rainforests being chopped down to make disposable chopsticks. I'm boiling about the fact that we have palm oil put into every single one of our substances. — Joanna Lumley

For Australians, climate change is no longer a distant threat. Our rivers are dying, bush fires are more ferocious and more frequent and our natural wonders - the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu, our rainforests - are now at risk. — Kevin Rudd

Before my first visit to Waorani territory, I was introduced to don Casimiro Mamallacta, a traditional Kichwa healer and family man living in the outskirts of the jungle town of Archidona, by his daughter Mercedes, whom I met at the Jatun Sacha biological station. During the years that I was collaborating on the demarcation effort and in between the work sessions, I lived with don Casimiro's family. — Jonathon Miller Weisberger

I'd like to see the Amazon rainforests before they're all gone, and also the Galapagos - that's another one I'd like to do. I'd love to go diving in those areas. Basically, places, like, that are kind of going away, and I'd like to see them before they all become condos and high-rises. — Bill Engvall

I am a great supporter of bionics and this diversity in nature, this genetic diversity, is not available for free. We, as industrialized nations, have already sinned enough, and we have significantly reduced biodiversity in our countries. But now we expect the poor, less developed countries of the world to preserve their rainforests, mangrove forests and coral landscapes for us at no charge. — Klaus Topfer

Pollution were the rainbow-coloured oil slicks that spread upon the ocean's salty surface, the curling tendrils of smoke spiralling upwards into gray skies, the funeral pyres of rainforests, the sting of acid in the spring rain. Nonetheless, there was something about them that seemed so innocent and kind and friendly, despite the sites they guarded. Mandy often wondered why that was. Pollution looked like living weapons, with their sharp fingernails, powerful abilities and canine-like teeth, yet they had the most beautiful eyes and polite personalities. — Rebecca McNutt

In the rain forest, no niche lies unused. No emptiness goes unfilled. No gasp of sunlight goes untrapped. In a million vest pockets, a million life-forms quietly tick. No other place on earth feels so lush. Sometimes we picture it as an echo of the original Garden of Eden - a realm ancient, serene, and fertile, where pythons slither and jaguars lope. But it is mainly a world of cunning and savage trees. Truant plants will not survive. The meek inherit nothing. Light is a thick yellow vitamin they would kill for, and they do. One of the first truths one learns in the rain forest is that there is nothing fainthearted or wimpy about plants. — Diane Ackerman

Depending on which biologist you speak to, between thirty-six and forty total phyla are recognized on our planet. Rainforests, our flagships of biodiversity, are known to contain sixteen phyla. The spaces in between sand grains are home to twenty-two. — Michael Welland

We're at a crucial point in history. We cannot have fast cars, computers the size of credit cards, and modern conveniences, whilst simultaneously having clean air, abundant rainforests, fresh drinking water and a stable climate. This generation can have one or the other but not both. Humanity must make a choice. Both have an opportunity cost. Gadgetry or nature? Pick the wrong one and the next generations may have neither. — Mark Boyle

Our current system of food production simply does not make sense. More than a third of the world's grain is fed to livestock, which return to us only a fraction of those nutrients. A large amount of land is needed to produce the grains needed to feed the livestock, and this land is often obtained by burning down rainforests and other ecosystem-dense land. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Reduction is the least observed of the three R's of environmentalism ('reduce, reuse, recycle') but it's probably the most important. Reuse and recycling are sensible measures in an over-productive society, but why not neutralise the problem of overproduction at the source? Instead of choosing to act efficiently at the end of a product's life cycle by reusing or recycling it, we should stop said product from being made in the first place by eliminating consumer demand for it. If the rainforests must be burned and the oceans poisoned to cater for the essentials of human life, then so be it and we'll call it an inevitable pity; but for that to happen in the name of games consoles, cell phones and chocolate fountains is a wanton and avoidable shame. — Robert Wringham

I told her we were going to get married, and all she could talk about was frogs.
She said there's these hills where it's hot and rains all the time, and in the rainforests there are these very tall trees and right in the top branches of the trees there are these like great big flowers called ... bromeliads, I think, and water gets into the flowers and makes little pools and there's a type of frog that lays eggs in the pools and tadpoles hatch and grow into new frogs and these little frogs live their whole lives in the flowers right at the top of the trees and don't even know about the ground, and once you know the world is full of things like that, your life is never the same. — Terry Pratchett

If the entire world decided to become vegan tomorrow, a whole host of the world's problems would disappear overnight. Climate change would decrease by 25 percent, deforestation would cease, rainforests would be preserved, our water- and air-quality would increase, life-expectancy rates would increase, and our rates of cancer would plummet, so certainly, with that one action of becoming vegan you are quite effectively making the world a better place. — Moby

The Waorani carry out a similar diet with their arrow poison, called curare or, in their language, oomae. This is another amazing product of the indigenous science, a most sophisticated technology that the Waorani extrapolated from an ancient myth. — Jonathon Miller Weisberger

When speaking of the mighty Andes and the so-called "eyebrows" country at the range's eastern base- the Tropical Wet Forest region-I am first obliged to give homage to the Apu, the Mountain Lords, the ice-capped everlasting sovereigns of these great lands, on whose forested slopes manifests the most marvelous biological diversity. — Jonathon Miller Weisberger

It doesn't take a genius to pump up the GNP [of a developing country] by burning down rainforests, using slave labor and social repression to keep things in place. — Hazel Henderson

Our globe is under new dramatic environmental pressure: our globe is warming, our ice caps melting, our glaciers receding, our coral is dying, our soils are eroding, our water tables falling, our fisheries are being depleted, our remaining rainforests shrinking. Something is very, very wrong with our eco-system. — Richard Lamm

The Secoya are trapped between the devastating effects of the colonization frontier and their rich traditional past, which is proving to be as fragile a reality and as fleeting a memory as the most powerful visions of their esoteric science. But instead of detailing that sad scene, in this chapter I have attempted to portray my image of this culture as I see it in its fading colors, magic, and awe-inspiring mystery. — Jonathon Miller Weisberger

What is the point of labeling each individual piece of fruit? Buy the fruit, EAT the ad! We've carved a chunk out of the ozone, burned up all the rainforests, soon we won't be able to BREATHE, and all because we had to label each individual piece of fruit. — Lucy Ellmann

Anathema didn't only believe in ley-lines, but in seals, whales, bicycles, rainforests, whole grain in loaves, recycled paper, white South Africans out of South Africa, and Americans out of practically everywhere down to and including Long Island. She didn't compartmentalize her beliefs. They were welded into one enormous, seamless belief, compared with which that held by Joan of Arc seemed a mere idle notion. — Terry Pratchett

I see the day in our own lifetime that reverence for the natural systems, the oceans, the rainforests, the soil, the grasslands, and all other living things will be so strong that no narrow ideology based upon politics or economics will overcome it. — Jerry Brown

It's not just global warming, it's not just a loss of biodiversity, it's not just the pollution of our oceans and the clearing of our rainforests and all these complicated systems, The [11th Hour] movie talks about the world economy, it talks about politics, it talks about personal transformation and environmental consciousness that we need to have in this generation to implement a lot of these changes that need to occur. — Leonardo DiCaprio

No killing," Jordan said. "We're trying to make you feel peaceful, so you don't go up in flames. Blood, killing, war, those are all non-peaceful things. Isn't there anything else you like? Rainforests? Chirping birds?"
"Weapons," said Jace. "I like weapons."
"I'm starting to think we have a problematic issue of personal philosophy here."
Jace leaned forward, his palms flat on the ground. "I'm a warrior," he said. "I was brought up as a warrior. I didn't have toys, I had weapons. I slept with a wooden sword until I was five. My first books were medieval demonologies with illuminated pages. The first songs I learned were chants to banish demons. I know what brings me peace, and it isn't sandy beaches or chirping birds in rainforests. I want a weapon in my hand and a strategy to win."
Jordan looked at him levelly. "So you're saying that what brings you peace ... is war."
"Now you get it. — Cassandra Clare

Circus performers and variety shows will never captivate me in the same way as steppes or rainforests, or the sky's uncountable galaxies and all the billions of light years that separate them. — Jostein Gaarder

But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rainforests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere. — Mark Haddon

having freed ourselves from the constraints of evolution, humans nevertheless remain dependent on the earth's biological and geochemical systems. By disrupting these systems - cutting down tropical rainforests, altering the composition of the atmosphere, acidifying the oceans - we're putting our own survival in danger. — Elizabeth Kolbert