Top 120 David Suzuki Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Human beings are often at their best when responding to immediate crises – car accidents, house fires, hurricanes. We are less effective in the face of enormous but slow-moving crises such as the loss of biodiversity or climate change...”

— David Suzuki

52. “More than a billion people lack adequate access to clean water.”

— David Suzuki

53. “Our planet has not seen an extinction crisis as serious as the one in progress for 65 million years.”

— David Suzuki

54. “When I was a kid, being outside was the norm. Rain or shine, our parents would tell us to get out of the house.”

— David Suzuki

55. “The medical literature tells us that the most effective ways to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and many more problems are through healthy diet and exercise. Our bodies have evolved to move, yet we now use the energy in oil instead of muscles to do our work.”

— David Suzuki

56. “But human borders mean nothing to air, water, windblown soil or seeds or migrating fish, birds or mammals.”

— David Suzuki

57. “It’s not unexpected that shooting massive amounts of water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure into the earth to shatter shale and release natural gas might shake things up. But earthquakes aren’t the worst problem with fracking.”

— David Suzuki

58. “Humans are now the most numerous mammal on the planet. There are more humans than rats or mice. Humans have a huge ecological footprint, magnified by their technology.”

— David Suzuki

59. “Feeding our energy appetite is top of mind for many people these days.”

— David Suzuki

60. “Think about a seed. Once it lands, it’s stuck. It can’t move to find better soil, moisture or sunlight. It’s able to create every part of itself to grow and reproduce with the help of air, water and sun.”

— David Suzuki

61. “With an estimated population of nine billion people by 2050, we cannot continue to consume resources at the same rate and maintain our quality of life.”

— David Suzuki

62. “Global trade has advantages. For starters, it allows those of us who live through winter to eat fresh produce year-round. And it provides economic benefits to farmers who grow that food.”

— David Suzuki

63. “If we continue to set human borders and the economy as our highest priorities, we will never come to grips with the destructiveness of our activities and institutions.”

— David Suzuki

64. “The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity – then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.”

— David Suzuki

65. “Any scientist who tells you they know that GMOs are safe and not to worry about it, is either ignorant of the history of science or is deliberately lying. Nobody knows what the long-term effect will be.”

— David Suzuki

66. “A book is like a single tree in a forest, in that it exists in conjunction with and because of a great many others around it.”

— David Suzuki

67. “Ultimately we need to recognize that while humans continue to build urban landscapes, we share these spaces with others species.”

— David Suzuki

68. “One of the joys of being a grandparent is getting to see the world again through the eyes of a child.”

— David Suzuki

69. “With the world’s human population now at seven billion and growing, and the demand for technology and modern conveniences increasing, we can’t control all our negative impacts. But we have to find better ways to live within the limits nature and its cycles impose.”

— David Suzuki

70. “The voluntary approach to corporate social responsibility has failed in many cases.”

— David Suzuki

71. “Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism.”

— David Suzuki

72. “We have become a force of nature.”

— David Suzuki

73. “Some argue we should get coal, oil and gas out of the ground as quickly as possible, build more pipelines and make as much money as we can selling it here and abroad. Their priorities are the economy and meeting short-term energy needs so we can live the lives to which we’ve become accustomed.”

— David Suzuki

74. “How you imagine the world determines how you live in it.”

— David Suzuki

75. “We must reinvent a future free of blinders so that we can choose from real options.”

— David Suzuki

76. “My earliest memory from childhood is of fishing with my father. And I remember vividly we were in a store, and we were buying a pup tent to go on our first camping trip.”

— David Suzuki

77. “The human brain now holds the key to our future. We have to recall the image of the planet from outer space: a single entity in which air, water, and continents are interconnected. That is our home.”

— David Suzuki

78. “For the sake of our health, our children and grandchildren and even our economic well-being, we must make protecting the planet our top priority.”

— David Suzuki

79. “A balance between sustainable ecology and sustainable human life, on the one hand, and the unfettered drive for profit, on the other, is just an oxymoron.”

— David Suzuki

80. “So we draw lines around our property, our counties, our cities, our states, our countries. And, boy, do we act as if those lines are important. I mean, we go to war. We will kill and die to protect those boundaries. Nature couldn’t give two hoots about our national boundaries...”

— David Suzuki

81. “Each time I visit Japan, I am reminded of how Canadian I am and how little racial connection matters.”

— David Suzuki

82. “In the environmental movement, every time you lose a battle it’s for good, but our victories always seem to be temporary and we keep fighting them over and over again.”

— David Suzuki

83. “Japan is a model already to the lie that economic growth is the key to our future. If they can really show an alternative to nukes and fossil fuels, then they will be the poster boy for the renewable energy for the future.”

— David Suzuki

84. “Rapid population growth and technological innovation, combined with our lack of understanding about how the natural systems of which we are a part work, have created a mess.”

— David Suzuki

85. “Each of us has the ability to act powerfully for change; together we can restore that ancient and sustaining harmony.”

— David Suzuki

86. “We now have access to so much information that we can find support for any prejudice or opinion.”

— David Suzuki

87. “If we humans are good at anything, it’s thinking we’ve got a terrific idea and going for it without acknowledging the potential consequences or our own ignorance.”

— David Suzuki

88. “If Canada, one of the richest nations in the world, can’t meet Kyoto targets, why should China or India give any considerations for meeting the targets?”

— David Suzuki

89. “Some solutions are relatively simple and would provide economic benefits: implementing measures to conserve energy, putting a price on carbon through taxes and cap-and-trade and shifting from fossil fuels to clean and renewable energy sources.”

— David Suzuki

90. “Other things, like capitalism, free enterprise, the economy, currency, the market, are not forces of nature, we invented them. They are not immutable and we can change them.”

— David Suzuki

91. “Environmentali sm is really about seeing our place in world in a way that humans have always known up until very recently – that we are part of nature-utterly dependent on the natural world for our well being and survival.”

— David Suzuki

92. “Hydraulic fracturing requires massive amounts of water. Disposing of the toxic wastewater, as well as accidental spills, can contaminate drinking water and harm human health.”

— David Suzuki

93. “Treaties, agreements and organizations to help settle disputes may be necessary, but they often favor the interests of business over citizens.”

— David Suzuki

94. “What about our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren? Do we not want them to live healthy and happy lives?”

— David Suzuki

95. “Environmentalism isn’t a discipline or specialty. It’s a way of seeing our place in the world. And we need everybody to see the world that way. Don’t think ‘In order to make a difference I have to become an environmentalist.’”

— David Suzuki

96. “If we have any hope of finding ways for seven billion people to live well on planet with finite resources, we have to learn to use our resources efficiently. Plastic bags are neither efficient nor environmentally friendly.”

— David Suzuki

97. “The current economic system is fundamentally flawed and inevitably destructive.”

— David Suzuki

98. “If we call insects “pests,” then we can make war on them. And we have done that, developing powerful chemicals that kill all insects to eliminate the ones that are troublesome to us. To me, using broad-spectrum pesticides is like dealing with high rates of crime in a town or neighbourhood by removing or killing everyone in the area.”

— David Suzuki

99. “There are some things in the world we can’t change...”

— David Suzuki

100. “The failure of world leaders to act on the critical issue of global warming is often blamed on economic considerations.”

— David Suzuki