100 Best Sustainability Quotes (Inspiring & Funny & Short)

Sustainability is topic that has become very prominent and important since a couple of years. Not only because of challenges like climate change, environmental pollution, or biodiversity loss. However, pure numbers are hardly inspiring anybody nowadays… That’s why we created this list of sustainability quotes of famous sustainability leaders and environmental activists for you, which we broke down into different categories.

Hopefully these sustainability quotes will motivate you to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle and continually improve your sustainability efforts, as well as spread awareness about the environment!

Inspirational Sustainability Quotes

“If you don’t like the way the world is, you change it…one step at a time.” – Marian Wright Edelman
“There must be more to life than having everything!” – Maurice Sendak
“We can sit back, do nothing and watch our planet be destroyed. Or we can take action, become advocates and start making lifestyle choices which are kinder to people and the planet.” – Kira Simpson
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — R. Buckminster Fuller
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank
“Being green is more than just buying ‘eco’. It is an unshakable commitment to a sustainable lifestyle.” – Jennifer Nini
“Our ancestors did great work for humanity. What will we do for the next generations?” — Lailah Gifty Akita
“No one will protect what they don’t care about, and no one will care about what they have never experienced.” – David Attenborough
I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. – Edward Everett Hale
“Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites.” – William Ruckelshaus
“We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” — Howard Zinn
Look after the land and the land will look after you, destroy the land and it will destroy you. – Aboriginal Proverb
“Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations.” — Jean-Paul Richter
Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. – Aldo Leopold
“Building a world where we meet our own needs without denying future generations a healthy society is not impossible, as some would assert. The question is where societies choose to put their creative efforts.” — Christopher Flavin
“We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.” — Adlai E. Stevenson
“We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” – Howard Zinn
“Going back to a simpler life based on living by sufficiency rather than excess is not a step backward.” – Yvon Chouinard
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead
“The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.” — Ross Perot
“When sustainability is viewed as being a matter of survival for your business, I believe you can create massive change.” — Cameron Sinclair
“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.” – Rachel Carson
“The sustainability revolution will, hopefully, be the third major social and economic turning point in human history, following the Neolithic Revolution – moving from hunter-gathering to farming – and the Industrial Revolution.” — King Charles
Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction. – Dr. Edward O. Wilson
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” — Edmund Burke

Famous Sustainability Quotes

“The future is green energy, sustainability, renewable energy.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger
“The best way to predict future is to create it.” — Peter Drucker
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“Sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” — Gro Harlem Brundtland
“Sustainability is a political choice, not a technical one. It’s not a question of whether we can be sustainable, but whether we choose to be” — Gary Lawrence
“There must be a better way to make the things we want, a way that doesn’t spoil the sky, or the rain or the land” — Paul McCartney
“Our biggest challenge in this new century is to take an idea that seems abstract – sustainable development – and turn it into a reality for all the world’s people” — Kofi Annan
“No matter how complex global problems may seem, it is we ourselves who have given rise to them. They cannot be beyond our power to resolve” — Daisaku Ikeda
“The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities is the bedrock of our enterprise for a sustainable world” — Narendra Modi
“How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life?” — Charles A. Lindbergh
“The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them.” — Paul Hawken
“Without environmental sustainability, economic stability and social cohesion cannot be achieved.” — Phil Harding
“An act of violence against nature should be judged as severely as that against society or another person.” – Dr. Michael W.Fox

See Related: The Top 15 Sustainability Books

Sustainability Quotes about Food

“Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.” — Stewart Udall
“A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
“When the soil disappears, the soul disappears.” – Ymber Delecto
“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” — Cree Indian Proverb
“Forests and meat animals compete for the same land. The prodigious appetite of the affluent nations for meat means that agribusiness can pay more than those who want to preserve or restore the forest. We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet – for the sake of hamburgers.” — Peter Singer
“If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.” — Jacques Barzun
“Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water. Don’t sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet.” — Carl Sagan
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” — J.R.R. Tolkien
“We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.” — Thomas Fuller

See Related: 50 Ways to Save Water

Sustainability Quotes about Hard-Facts

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” — Albert A. Bartlett
“People ‘over-produce’ pollution because they are not paying for the costs of dealing with it.” – Ha-Joon Chang
“Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle.” – Pope John Paul II
“There is no such thing as ‘away’. When we throw anything away, it must go somewhere.” – Annie Leonard
“Global warming will not end by Earth finding shade under the trees but under our hands joined together” — Agona Apell
“Most of the damage we cause to the planet is the result of our own ignorance.” – Yvon Chouinard
“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“There is a great need for the introduction of new values in our society, where bigger is not necessarily better, where slower can be faster, and where less can be more.” – Gaylord Nelson
“Where the quality of life goes down for the environment, the quality of life goes down for humans.” – George Holland
”We only get a handful of decades on earth, I’d rather spend that time doing good than perpetuating bad.” – Tim Silverwood
“21st Century choice: Look after our planet, and it will look after us, or don’t and face the consequences” — Phil Harding
“An act of violence against nature should be judged as severely as that against society or another person.” — Dr. Michael W.Fox
“It angers me when sustainability gets used as a buzz word. For 90 percent of the world, sustainability is a matter of survival.” — Cameron Sinclair
“You have to hold yourself accountable for your actions, and that’s how we’re going to protect the Earth.” – Julia Butterfly Hill
“In America today, you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops.” — Paul Brooks
“The great challenge of the twenty-first century is to raise people everywhere to a decent standard of living while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible.” – Edward O. Wilson
“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” – Aldo Leopold
“Unless we are willing to encourage our children to reconnect with and appreciate the natural world, we can’t expect them to help protect and care for it.” – David Suzuki
“People ‘over-produce’ pollution because they are not paying for the costs of dealing with it.” — Ha-Joon Chang
“Far and away, the greatest threat to the ocean, and thus to ourselves, is ignorance. But we can do something about that.” – Sylvia Earle
“The most sustainable way is to not make things. The second most sustainable way is to make something very useful, to solve a problem that hasn’t been solved.” – Thomas Sigsgaard
“We must shift our thinking away from short-term gain toward long-term investment and sustainability, and always have the next generations in mind with every decision we make.” — Deb Haaland
“If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled, or composted, then it should be restricted, designed or removed from production.” – Pete Seeger
“Sustainability can’t be like some sort of a moral sacrifice or political dilemma or a philanthropical cause. It has to be a design challenge.” — Bjarke Ingels
“Because we don’t think about future generations, they will never forget us.” — Henrik Tikkanen
“In the 21st century, I think the heroes will be the people who will improve the quality of life, fight poverty and introduce more sustainability.” — Bertrand Piccard
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. – Luther Standing Bear
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“Spend some time outdoors exploring where you live. When you love your home, you’ll fight harder to protect it.” – Kira Simpson
It cannot be right to manufacture billions of objects that are used for a matter of minutes, and then are with us for centuries. – Roz Savage
“Sustainable development is a fundamental break that’s going to reshuffle the entire deck. There are companies today that are going to dominate in the future simply because they understand that.” — Francois-Henri Pinault
Reducing our levels of consumption will not be a sacrifice but a bonus if we simply redefine the meaning of the word ‘success.’ – David Wann
“Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one of us must take responsibility for our own lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.” – Jane Goodall
“Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.” – Stewart Udall
“The natural environment sustains the life of all beings universally.” – Dalai Lama

See Related: 50 Ways to Save the Planet

Funny Quotes on Sustainability

“Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge.” — Thomas Edison
“It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.” — Ansel Adams
“All I want is to stand in a field and to smell green, to taste air, to feel the earth want me, without all this concrete hating me.” – Phillip Pulfrey
“Our life is frittered away by detail…Simplify, simplify, simplify! Simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.” — Henry Thoreau
“The difference between animals and humans is that animals change themselves for the environment, but humans change the environment for themselves.” — Ayn Rand
“Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites.” — William Ruckelshaus
“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” — W.H AUDEN
“Sustainable Development is more than meeting the needs of today and future generations; to my understanding, this definition better fits the sex industry.” — M.F. Moonzajer
“Our life is frittered away by detail…Simplify, simplify, simplify! Simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.” – Henry Thoreau
“It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her.” — Michel de Montaigne, Cannibales
“A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman of the next generation.” — James Freeman Clarke
“The best friend of earth of man is the tree. When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources on the earth.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

Short Sustainability Quotes

“The most environmentally friendly product is the one you didn’t buy.” – Joshua Becker
“There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.” — Marshall McLuhan
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“To do good, you actually have to do something.” – Yvon Chouinard
“Buy less, choose well, make it last.” – Vivienne Westwood
“Be part of the solution, not part of the pollution.” – Unknown
“Sustainability is here to stay, or we may not be” — Niall FitzGerald
“The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them.” – Paul Hawken
“We have a duty to care for the environment.” — Lailah Gifty Akita
“It angers me when sustainability gets used as a buzz word. For 90 percent of the world, sustainability is a matter of survival.” – Cameron Sinclair
“Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.” — Aldo Leopold
“Sustainability is no longer about doing less harm. It’s about doing more good.” — Jochen Zeitz
“We can never have enough of Nature.” — Henry David Thoreau
“We can’t just consume our way to a more sustainable world.” — Jennifer Nini
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu
“He that plants trees love others besides himself.” — Thomas Fuller
“When the soil disappears, the soul disappears.” — Ymber Delecto
He that plants trees loves others beside himself. – Thomas Fuller
“Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.” — Albert Einstein
“Consume less; share better.” — Hervé Kempf
“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” – Hans Hofmann
“Treat the Earth as though we intend to stay here” — Crispin Tickell
“It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.” – Ansel Adams
“One planet, one experiment.” — E. O. Wilson
“We are not above nature, we are a part of nature.” – Jennifer Nini
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” — Robert Swan
“Ownership is a sine qua non of sustainable development.” — James Wolfensohn
“The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.” – Carl Sagan
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” — Robert Swan

See Related: The Sustainability Paradox

We hope you’ve enjoyed these sustainability quotes!

Check out these books about sustainability and our other articles to learn more about sustainability!

Synonyms for “Sustainable”

Sophia Jones

Sophia, a co-founder of EcoCation, is a distinguished expert in the publication of scientific articles focused on sustainable business and botany. With a profound knowledge of both the corporate and natural worlds, she bridges the gap between ecological science and business practices. Sophia’s work is pivotal in promoting sustainable development and environmental responsibility. Her dedication to high-quality, research-based content has established EcoCation as a leading platform for innovative and impactful ecological discourse. Through her expertise and leadership, Sophia continues to drive the conversation on integrating sustainability into business and botanical sciences.