Orators

"With the growing urgency of climate change, we cannot have it both ways. We cannot shout from the rooftops about the dangers of global warming and then turn around and shout even louder about the "dangers" of windmills."

"More than a billion people lack adequate access to clean water."

"[I]f one day I look out from my cabin's porch and see a row of windmills spinning in the distance, I won't curse them. I will praise them. It will mean we are finally getting somewhere."

"Suzuki’s extreme comments reveal how offside he is with Canadians"

"There has been no media coverage of D Suzuki's extreme anti-immigration views.What would happen if a prominent conservative said same thing?"

"we've become totally narcissistic. And Donald Trump, to me, is the ultimate expression of that kind of narcissism. Me, me, me. Screw anybody else is not about me, me, me."

"the underlying root cause of our problem is that we've radically shifted in the way that we live on earth. For most of our existence, 95% of human existence, we were a nomadic hunter gatherer, we had to follow animals and plants do the seasons on their migration, carrying everything we owned. You know damn well you're deeply embedded in nature. And all of your ceremonies and in traditional cultures, their ceremonies are about thanking their creator for Mother Nature's abundance, and making a commitment to act properly in order to ensure that abundance will continue. That's what's needed, a recognition of a deeply embedded.. but we've elevated ourselves above all, we think that we're the top of the heap, and that everything is there for us to use in any way we can imagine. And now with environmentalism, oh, well, we have to be more careful. But we still are making that assumption-- we're at the top of the heap. So all of our solutions are all about serving us. We got to ensure jobs, we got to ensure the economy. We’ve got to ensure politically that… and we're not seeing that the deeper underlying thing is the way that we live on this planet"

"I think even a lot of really committed environmentalists, they think, well, if everybody drives an electric car, and we have all LED lights, and and you know, that somehow everything will be fine. No, it's not going to be that simple. Reduction of our fossil fuel use by 2030. Everything is going to change and we can't go on in this hyper consuming way. There going to be massive changes."

"We're changing the chemistry of the atmosphere. And we're doing it in a way that has never happened in nature. We're doing it so quickly. Nature, of course, has had fluctuations. We've gone from warm periods to ice ages. But that's been over 1000s and 1000s of years. We're doing it at an unprecedented rate. The experiment’s started. If we stopped all emissions today it will still take over a century to find equilibration. At the same time that we're adding stuff to the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate, we're cutting down, we're destroying the only real safety that we have, which is the web of living green things all over the planet."

"I think for the individuals -- make the word disposable an obscene word. If someone says, “Well, I got a disposable cup”, you cover your kid's ear and say, “Don't listen to that man, what a terrible thing to say”. Because the whole idea of disposable, that's a notion brought in by economists."

"The most important thing is to say, we've got to be 50% off fossil fuels by 2030. And this is what we have to do every year, we've got to mandate reductions year after year after year, if we're serious about it."

"We can shut down immediately all subsidizing of the fossil fuel industry. We've got to shut down their ability to advertise, the way we did with tobacco."

"We've got to begin to shut down fracking and the the more difficult areas, deep underground and the deep underwater. Shutdown the riskiest areas...Fracking is one of the dumbest ways that you can imagine getting your energy because of the water that you're using, polluting it."

"If you look at the states in the United States, or the provinces, that have not really been able to come to grips with the COVID crisis, they are the ones led by people who said, “We got to get the economy going, the economy, the economy”, so that the the health and well being of the community or the the State is not as important as the economy...the ultra rich have just been getting richer and richer. So you know, the economy's not connected to the well being of people or the well being of the planet."

"the biggest challenge we've got to do right away, stop the hyper consumption that demands that all of these areas serve us."

"We now live within a globalized economy. So to live the way we are in Vancouver, it means that people in Mexico, people in Africa are having to change the way they're living."

"I meet a lot of parents that say, “what, what can I do”, you know, and I say, ‘“Stop driving your kids to school!” This is crazy. It'll be healthier for you and healthier for the environment. So it's not just the way we design our cities differently, but our own behavior within the cities."

"I think we have to stop building cities to serve the car... We have to return to the notion that cities have become human habitats, cities are human created things."

"Many solutions are being employed or developed, but not fast enough to forestall catastrophe. In Canada, we have federal and provincial governments hell-bent on expanding fossil fuel infrastructure and development to reap as much profit as possible from a dying industry and to satisfy the vagaries of short election cycles. The fossil fuel industry continues to receive massive subsidies, including a multi-billion-dollar taxpayer bailout for an American pipeline company, while clean energy receives far less support."

"No matter what lengths politicians, corporate interests and others take to avoid, downplay and obfuscate serious issues around environmental degradation and our economic system’s destructive path, we can’t deny reality. Studies show we must refrain from burning most fossil fuel reserves to avoid catastrophic warming. In little more than a century, the human population has more than quadrupled to seven billion and rising, and our plastic-choked, consumer-driven, car-obsessed cultures have led to resource depletion, species extinction, ocean degradation, climate change and more. It’s past time to open our eyes and shift to a more sensible approach to living on this small, precious planet."

"The question is have we met our match?"

"Oh, I think Canada is full too! Although it’s the second largest country in the world, our useful area has been reduced. Our immigration policy is disgusting: We plunder southern countries by depriving them of future leaders, and we want to increase our population to support economic growth. It’s crazy!"

"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others."

"Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now. We do not need the praises of a Homer, or of anyone else whose words may delight us for the moment, but the estimation of facts will fall short of what is really true."

"Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it."

"The whole Earth is the Sepulchre of famous men; and their story is not graven only on Stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives."

"Trees, though they are cut and lopped, grow up again quickly, but if men are destroyed, it is not easy to get them again."

"Wait for that wisest of all counselors, Time."

"Pericles did undoubtcdly seek by every means in his power to win an undisputed position at Athens; and undoubtedly he had a passion for art and literature. He was, if we please to say it, a demagogue and a connoisseur. But he was something more. Looking at the whole evidence before us with impartial eyes, we cannot refuse to acknowledge that he cherished aspirations worthy of a great statesman. He sincerely desired that every Athenian should owe to his city the blessing of an education in all that was beautiful, and the opportunity of a happy and useful life. If Solon had laid down rules, not less excellent than precise, for the education of the Athenian youth, Pericles would go further, and educate the Athenian man."

"Instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all."

"But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it."

"Nor is it any longer possible for you to give up this empire … Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go."

"I could tell you a long story (and you know it as well as I do) about what is to be gained by beating the enemy back. What I would prefer is that you should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she realty is, and should fall in love with her. When you realize her greatness, then reflect that what made her great was men with a spirit of adventure, men who knew their duty, men who were ashamed to fall below a certain standard. If they ever failed in an enterprise, they made up their minds that at any rate the city should not find their courage lacking to her, and they gave to her the best contribution that they could. They gave her their lives, to her and to all of us, and for their own selves they won praises that never grow old, the most splendid of sepulchers — not the sepulchre in which their bodies are laid, but where their glory remains eternal in men's minds, always there on the right occasion to stir others to speech or to action. For famous men have the whole earth as their memorial: it is not only the inscriptions on their graves in their own country that mark them out; no, in foreign lands also, not in any visible form but in people's hearts, their memory abides and grows. It is for you to try to be like them. Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous."

"Hatred and unpopularity at the moment have fallen to the lot of all who have aspired to rule others; but where odium must be incurred, true wisdom incurs it for the highest objects. Hatred also is short-lived; but that which makes the splendour of the present and the glory of the future remains for ever unforgotten. Make your decision, therefore, for glory then and honour now, and attain both objects by instant and zealous effort: do not send heralds to Lacedaemon, and do not betray any sign of being oppressed by your present sufferings, since they whose minds are least sensitive to calamity, and whose hands are most quick to meet it, are the greatest men and the greatest communities."

"Our love of what is beautiful does not lead to extravagance; our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft. We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it, the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it."

"Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves"

"If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing..."

"We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all."

"Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it."

"The very word "sorrow" colours the fact of sorrow, the pain of it."

"And the brain has been trained to record because then in that recording there is safety, there is security, there is strength, a vitality, and therefore in that recording the mind creates the image about oneself. Right? And that image will constantly get hurt. So is it possible to live without a single image? Go into it, sir. Don't please go to sleep. Single image about yourself, about your husband, wife, children, friend and so on, about the politicians, about the priests, about the ideals, not a single shadow of an image? We are saying it is possible, must be, otherwise you will always be getting hurt, always living in a pattern. In that there is no freedom. And when you call me an idiot, to be so attentive at that moment. Right? When you give complete attention there is no recording. It is only when there is not attention, inattention, you record. I wonder if you capture this. Is it getting too difficult? Too abstract? That is, you flatter me. I like it. The liking at that moment is inattention. In that moment there is no attention. Therefore recording takes place. But when you flatter me, instead of calling me an idiot, now you have gone to the other extreme, flatter me, to listen to it so completely, without any reaction, then there is no centre which records."

"When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts, he will see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless insight brings about a deep, radical mutation in the mind."

"It is man’s pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence."

"The individuality is the name, the form and superficial culture he acquires from tradition and environment. The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete freedom from the content of his consciousness, which is common to all humanity."

"Psychological knowledge has made us dull."

"Can the mind resolve a psychological problem immediately?"

"Meditation is the emptying of the mind of all thought, for thought and feeling dissipate energy. They are repetitive, producing mechanical activities which are a necessary part of existence. But they are only part, and thought and feeling cannot possibly enter into the immensity of life. Quite a different approach is necessary, not the path of habit, association and the known; there must be freedom from these. Meditation is the emptying of the mind of the known. It cannot be done by thought or by the hidden prompting of thought, nor by desire in the form of prayer, nor through the self-effacing hypnotism of words, images, hopes, and vanities. All these have to come to an end, easily, without effort and choice, in the flame of awareness."

"Man, in order to escape his conflicts, has invented many forms of meditation. These have been based on desire, will, and the urge for achievement, and imply conflict and a struggle to arrive. This conscious, deliberate striving is always within the limits of a conditioned mind, and in this there is no freedom. All effort to meditate is the denial of meditation. Meditation is the ending of thought. It is only then that there is a different dimension which is beyond time."

"Woke up early this morning with an enormous sense of power, beauty and incorruptibility…in which nothing could exist that could become corrupt, deteriorate. It was too immense for the brain to grasp…limitless, untouchable, impenetrable. Because of its incorruptibility, there was in it beauty. Not the beauty that fades… One felt that in its presence all essence exists and so it was sacred. It was a life in which nothing could perish…With it all there was a sense of power – strength as solid as that mountain. (...) Yesterday, driving through the narrow valley … there was this benediction. It was very strong and everything was bathed in it.The noise of the stream was part of it and the high waterfall… It was like the gentle rain … and one became utterly vulnerable; the body seemed to have become light as a leaf, exposed and trembling. This went on … talk became monosyllabic. The beauty of it seemed incredible."

"Thought shattering itself against its own nothingness is the explosion of meditation."