Quotes by Donella Meadows

About Donella Meadows:

Donella H. "Dana" Meadows is best known as lead author of the influential book The Limits to Growth and Thinking in systems: a Primer
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Biodiversity can't be maintained by protecting a few species in a zoo, or by preserving greenbelts or national parks. To function properly, nature needs more room than that. It can maintain itself, however, without human expense, without zookeepers, ...

Donella Meadows

I know that war and mayhem run in our blood. I refuse to believe that they must dominate our lives. We humans are animals, too, but animals with amazing powers of rationality, morality, society. We can use our strength and courage not to savage each ...

Donella Meadows

What I hear every day on talk radio is America's lack of education - and I don't mean lack of college degrees. I mean lack of the basic art of democracy, the ability to seek the great truths that can come only by synthesizing the small truths possess...

Donella Meadows

We wouldn't have to speak so critically if businesses would stop feeding dead animals to live ones, putting non-food substances into food, tinkering with genetic codes, and spraying the countryside with poisons.

Donella Meadows

Ending poverty calls for humility, honesty, freedom from ideology and refusal to accept cruel simplicities about anyone's human potential. It requires listening to the wisdom and cutting the nonsense from both the Right and the Left.

Donella Meadows

World fertility surveys indicate that anywhere from one third to one half of the babies born in the Third World would not be if their mothers had access to cheap, reliable family planning, had enough personal empowerment to stand up to their husbands...

Donella Meadows

We don't need bigger cars or fancier clothes. We need self-respect, identity, community, love, variety, beauty, challenge and a purpose in living that is greater than material accumulation.

Donella Meadows

We don't need new laws that can be used by organizations with deep pockets and the ability to deduct legal expenses as a cost of doing business to intimidate individuals or organizations that voice legitimate concerns.

Donella Meadows

The European nations take climate change very seriously.

Donella Meadows

George W. cares as much about climate change as you would expect from a Texas oilman.

Donella Meadows

Like the other great revolutions, an environmental revolution will require sacrifices and lead to enormous gains. It, too, will change the face of the land and human institutions, hierarchies, self-definitions, cultures. It will take centuries. If it...

Donella Meadows

Social services, not wealth per se, seem to be the key to lower birth rates. The Chinese, although among the poorest peoples of the world, have brought their fertility rate down to 2.4, partly by social coercion, but mostly by broadly available educa...

Donella Meadows

A knowledgeable and courageous U.S. president could help enormously in leading the world's nations toward saving the climate.

Donella Meadows

You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere.

Donella Meadows

Relative to most of the energy and material flows on Earth, the machinations of humankind are puny. The planet's powers are much, much bigger than our own. But in a few sensitive places, we're making an impact on a planetary scale, and that impact is...

Donella Meadows

No expectations, no tension between goals and performance, no outrage, resolve or intention, no action, no results. There's only one way to get a government - and a nation - to stop drifting to low performance. That's to wake up and insist on higher ...

Donella Meadows

The actions of my government are not bearable. They devastate our natural resources and deprive our people. The politicians speak piously while practicing greed and divisiveness. They care nothing for the nation. I want to do more than withdraw my su...

Donella Meadows

Before they got vengeful, conservatives had some useful points to make about welfare. Government 'help' is too often guilt-assuaging gesture. It creates layers of wasteful bureaucracy. Too much help of the wrong sort creates a culture of dependency t...

Donella Meadows

Corporate responsibility extends not only to the customers, the resources and the workers of the present, but also to those of the future.

Donella Meadows

The human world is a long way from meeting the needs of the present, and it is borrowing massively from the future - not only by piling up money debt, but also by degrading the resources from which all real wealth ultimately comes.

Donella Meadows

Author Bio

  • NameDonella Meadows
  • DescriptionAmerican scientist
  • BornMarch 13, 1941
  • DiedFebruary 20, 2001
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter
  • AwardsMacArthur Fellows Program