G. K. Chesterton
(Of course, the ethic of all communities,
so far as we know,
before the invention of agriculture.)
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, page 204
(all emphasis in quote mine -- ed.)
quoted here
" In "Trees" Professor Stone points out that at various periods throughout history various "things" were regarded as legally rightless, including aliens, children, and women. Although each successive movement to confer rights on some theretofore rightless "entity" has first appeared "odd or frightening or laughable," the progress of the law, and of morals, has been to invite more and more members into an ever-widening community.
Professor Stone proceeds to argue for a further widening by proposing that special guardians be empowered to speak for the "voiceless" elements in Nature: in effect, to give "legal standing" to endangered species and threatened forests.
For this twenty-fifth anniversary commemorative reissue, Professor Stone has added a collection of his most influential writings including:
-How to Heal the Planet
-The Convention on Biological Diversity
-Should we Establish a Guardian to Speak for Future Generations?
-An Environmental Ethic for the 21st Century"
Interviewer: Another point in the Declaration of Independence is that all men are endowed by God with certain natural rights that cannot be taken away from them. These are the rights of life, liberty, and ...
Srila Prabhupada: But animals also have the right to life. Why don't animals also have the right to live? The rabbits, for instance, are living in their own way in the forest. Why does the government allow hunters to go and shoot them?
Interviewer: They were simply talking about human beings.
Srila Prabhupada: Then they have no real philosophy. The narrow idea that my family or my brother is good, and that I can kill all others, is criminal. Suppose that for my family's sake I kill your father, is that philosophy? Real philosophy is suhrdam sarva-bhutanam: friendliness to all living entities.
Science of Self-Realization (p. 209)
quoted here
"At-risk inner-city girls who see nature through the windows of their homes may have a better chance for success than those girls whose views are not as green, say scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
'... the greener the view that was available from their apartment window, the better they were able to concentrate, refrain from acting impulsively and delay gratification', said Andrea Faber Taylor, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of natural resources and environmental sciences.
'The greener views translated into better self-discipline.' "
"Mixing scientific insights with mystical ones, Rucker argues for the possibility of transcendence in rationality, especially in his nonfiction books like Infinity and the Mind (1982, recently re-printed in paper from Princeton University Press).
'One of the basic things that we humans do is to perceive patterns', Rucker says. 'To sense the universe as a single undivided whole is to see a certain kind of large-scale pattern. In order to feel that it is possible to discover useful things, it is encouraging to believe that the universe is one unified thing, and that you yourself are an integral part of the whole. For then it is more likely that the patterns you perceive have a good correspondence with the deep structure of reality'. "
"In his interesting book, Shadow Dancing in the U.S.A., Michael Ventura quotes the great Cecil Taylor on improvisation:
'Most people don't have any idea what improvisation is... It means the magical lifting of one's spirits to a state of trance... It means experiencing oneself as another kind of living organism, much in the way of a plant, a tree - the growth, you see, that's what it is... It has to do with religious forces.'
(From "Hear That Long Snake Moan," Shadow Dancing in the U.S.A.)"
Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen (sic). An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise."
Round River
, by Aldo Leopold, page 165
(my emphasis -- ed.)
quoted in River-Horse
by William Least Heat-Moon, page 355
or online here (good site)