Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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René Dubos

1901 – 1982 CE

Influential scientific environmentalist

Microbiologist, leading humanist and influential environmentalist; Dubos wrote 32 books including a Pulitzer Prize winner. Creator of the famous phrase, "Think Globally, Act Locally," he empowered and entrusted individuals, local, and small organizations making needed changes rather than relying only on large, impersonal, and out-of-touch institutions. He argued that only local, small-scale organizations can clearly see and respond to their "unique physical, climatic, and cultural contexts." He balanced this sentiment, however, with an emphasis on need for communication with a world order conscious of environmental priorities. While not ignoring our immense global challenges, he conveys an optimistic, positive, and realistic approach.

Eras

Unlisted Sources

Celebrations of life (1981)

Man Adapting

Quotes by René Dubos (22 quotes)

“agricultural practices have brought about dramatic decreases in the number of animals and plants of most native species and have simultaneously increased the numbers of other animals and plants... earth is constantly changing through the agency of all the forms of life which are part of it, including humankind.”

from Celebrations of life (1981)

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“Without diversity, freedom is but an empty word... Human beings are not really free and cannot be fully creative if they do not have many options from which to choose.”

from Celebrations of life (1981)

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“Social evolution proceeds most rapidly when different cultures come into close contact with each other and thus can exchange information and goods, even though each retains its originality.”

from Celebrations of life (1981)

Themes: Pluralism Culture

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“Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.”

from Celebrations of life (1981)

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“Every decision is like a murder, and our march forward is over the stillborn bodies of all our possible selves that will never be.”

Themes: Free Will

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“A very large percentage of illnesses are the expressions of inadequate responses to the environment.”

from Man Adapting

Themes: Health

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“A sense of continuity with the rest of creation is a form of religious experience essential to sanity.”

Themes: Continuity

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“The earth is literally our mother, not only because we depend on her for nurture and shelter but even more because the human species has been shaped by her in the womb of evolution. Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature.”

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“The word 'wilderness' occurs approximately three hundred times in the Bible, and all its meanings are derogatory.”

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“There is a demon in technology. It was put there by man and man will have to exorcise it before technological civilization can achieve the eighteenth-century ideal of humane civilized life.”

Themes: Technology

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“Nature always strikes back. It takes all the running we can do to remain in the same place.”

Themes: Karma

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“Man will survive as a species for one reason: He can adapt to the destructive effects of our power-intoxicated technology and of our ungoverned population growth, to the dirt, pollution and noise of a New York or Tokyo. And that is the tragedy. It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life.”

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“You cannot see the Milky Way in New York City any more ... We risk the loss of our sensual perception. And if you lose those, naturally, you try to compensate by other stimulations, by very loud noises, or by bright lights or drugs.”

Themes: Entertainment

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“Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back. The multiplicity of determinants which affect biological systems limits the power of the experimental method to predict their trends and behavior.”

Themes: Fate / Destiny

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“The very process of living is a continual interplay between the individual and his environment, often taking the form of a struggle resulting in injury or disease.”

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“As long as mankind is made up of independent individuals with free will, there cannot be any social status quo. Men will develop new urges, and these will give rise to new problems, which will require ever new solutions. Human life implies adventure, and there is no adventure without struggles and dangers.”

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“Sometimes the more measurable drives out the most important.”

Themes: Science

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“In 1946, Oxford University in England was offered large funds to create a new Institute of Human Nutrition. The University refused the funds on the ground that the knowledge of human nutrition was essentially complete, and that the proposed institution would soon run out of meaningful research projects.”

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“Thinking at a global level is a useful and exciting intellectual activity, but no substitute for the work needed to solve practical problems at home.”

from Celebrations of life (1981)

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“Globalization inevitably implies more standardization and therefore a decrease in diversity, which in turn would slow down the rate of social innovations. Another danger of globalization is that excessive interdependence of systems increases the likelihood of collective disasters if one of the subsystems fails”

from Celebrations of life (1981)

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“There have been countless political revolutions and other upheavals in the course of history but their final outcome has always been to recreate communities of a few hundred to a few thousand people in which everyone knew his or her place in the social order of things and accepted, willingly or under duress, the local rules of the game.”

from Celebrations of life (1981)

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“excessive interdependence of systems increases the likelihood of collective disasters... A partial degree of independence with regard to food production is in fact coming to be considered a matter of national security in most parts of the world.”

from Celebrations of life (1981)

Themes: Gardening

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