"We consider species to be like a brick in the foundation of a building. You can probably lose one or two or a dozen bricks and still have a standing house. But by the time you've lost 20 per cent of species, you're going to destabilize the entire structure. That's the way ecosystems work."
- Donald Falk, Christian Science Monitor, 26 May 1989
"For if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another might be lost, until the whole of things will vanish by piecemeal."
- Thomas Jefferson
"To save every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."
- Aldo Leopold, Round River, 1953
"Natural species are the library from which genetic engineers can work."
- Thomas E. Lovejoy, Time, 13 October 1986
"There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before."
- Robert Lynd
"It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of the existence of man. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of something else."
- Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed 1:72, c. 1190
"Without knowing it, we utilize hundreds of products each day that owe their origin to wild animals and plants. Indeed our welfare is intimately tied up with the welfare of wildlife. Well may conservationists proclaim that by saving the lives of wild species, we may be saving our own."
- Norman Myers, A Wealth of Wild Species, 1983
"The value of biodiversity is more than the sum of its parts."
- Byran G. Norton, speech for National Forum on Biodiversity in Washington, D.C., 21 September 1986
"What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected."
- Chief Seattle
"The bulldozer and not the atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century."
- Philip Shabecoff on the destruction of wildlife habitat, New York Times Magazine, 4 June 1978
"What is the nature of a species that knowingly and without good reason exterminates another?"
- George Small, The Blue Whale, 1971
"Those who wish to pet and baby wildlife love them, but those who respect their natures and wish to let them live their natural lives, love them more."
- Edwin Way Teale
"Once you have heard the lark, known the swish of feet through hill-top grass and smelt the earth made ready for the seed, you are never again going to be fully happy about the cities and towns that man carries like a crippling weight upon his back."
- Gwyn Thomas
"Without habitat, there is no wildlife. It's that simple."
- Wildlife Habitat Canada
