Top 100 Richard Louv Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Another British study discovered that average eight-year-olds were better able to identify characters from the Japanese card trading game Pokemon than native species in the community where they lived: Pikachu, Metapod, and Wigglytuff were names more familiar to them than otter, beetle, and oak tree.”

— Richard Louv

52. “Being close to nature, in general, helps boost a child’s attention span.”

— Richard Louv

53. “Unlike television, nature does not steal time; it amplifies it. Nature offers healing for a child living in a destructive family or neighborhood.”

— Richard Louv

54. “Nature is often overlooked as a healing balm for the emotional hardships in a child’s life.”

— Richard Louv

55. “I do not trust technology. I mean, I don’t think we’re in any danger of kids, you know, doing without video games in the future, but I am saying that their lives are largely out of balance.”

— Richard Louv

56. “One of my students told me that every time she learns the name of a plant, she feels as if she is meeting someone new. Giving a name to something is a way of knowing it.”

— Richard Louv

57. “No other youth group like the Scouts has trained so many future leaders while at the same time being a nature organization with its outdoor focus.”

— Richard Louv

58. “To take nature and natural play away from children may be tantamount to withholding oxygen.”

— Richard Louv

59. “Each of us-adult or child-must earn nature’s gift by knowing nature directly, however difficult it may be to glean that knowledge in an urban environment.”

— Richard Louv

60. “Our sensitivity to nature, and our humility within it, are essential to our physical and spiritual survival. Yet, our growing disconnection from nature dulls our senses, and eventually blunts even the sharpened sensory state created by man-made or natural disaster.”

— Richard Louv

61. “Green exercise improves psychological health.”

— Richard Louv

62. “Going out into nature was one outlet that I had, which truly allowed me to calm down and not think or worry.”

— Richard Louv

63. “The times I spent with my children in nature are among my most meaningful memories-and I hope theirs.”

— Richard Louv

64. “Nature – the sublime, the harsh, and the beautiful – offers something that the street or gated community or computer game cannot.”

— Richard Louv

65. “Here is the beginning of understanding: most parents are doing their best, and most children are doing their best, and they’re doing pretty well, all things considered.”

— Richard Louv

66. “Nature is about smelling, hearing, tasting, seeing...”

— Richard Louv

67. “Kids are plugged into some sort of electronic medium 44 hours per week.”

— Richard Louv

68. “Though we often see ourselves as separate from nature, humans are also part of that wildness.”

— Richard Louv

69. “We tend to block off many of our senses when we’re staring at a screen. Nature time can literally bring us to our senses.”

— Richard Louv

70. “The dugout in the weeds or leaves beneath a backyard willow, the rivulet of a seasonal creek, even the ditch between the front yard and the road-all of these places are entire universes to a young child.”

— Richard Louv

71. “IT TAKES TIME – loose, unstructured dreamtime – to experience nature in a meaningful way.”

— Richard Louv

72. “We are telling our kids that nature is in the past and it probably doesn’t count anymore, the future is in electronics, the boogeyman is in the woods, and playing outdoors is probably illicit and possibly illegal.”

— Richard Louv

73. “As the young spend less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically and this reduces the richness of human experience we need contact with nature.”

— Richard Louv

74. “Progress does not have to be patented to be worthwhile. Progress can also be measured by our interactions with nature and its preservation. Can we teach children to look at a flower and see all the things it represents: beauty, the health of an ecosystem, and the potential for healing?”

— Richard Louv

75. “Too often, small towns invaded by urban expatriates lose their character and physical beauty to overdevelopment.”

— Richard Louv

76. “Some kids don’t want to be organized all the time. They want to let their imaginations run; they want to see where a stream of water takes them.”

— Richard Louv

77. “How can our kids really understand the moral complexities of being alive if they are not allowed to engage in those complexities outdoors?”

— Richard Louv

78. “For the young, food is from Venus; farming is from Mars.”

— Richard Louv

79. “As one scientist puts it, we can now assume that just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep, they may very well need contact with nature.”

— Richard Louv

80. “What if more and more parents, grandparents and kids around the country band together to create outdoor adventure clubs, family nature networks, family outdoor clubs, or green gyms? What if this approach becomes the norm in every community?”

— Richard Louv

81. “I have a soft spot in my heart for tree houses, which have always imparted certain magic and practical knowledge.”

— Richard Louv

82. “Nature is one of the best antidotes to fear.”

— Richard Louv

83. “If war occurs, that positive adult contact in every shape is needed more than ever. It will be a matter of emotional life and death. There’s not a handy one-minute way of talking to your kid about war.”

— Richard Louv

84. “While outdoor activities in general help, settings with trees and grass are the most beneficial.”

— Richard Louv

85. “Numerous studies document the benefits to students from school grounds that are ecologically diverse and include free play areas, habitats for wildlife, walking trails, and gardens.”

— Richard Louv

86. “Kids and adults pay a price for too much tech, and it’s not wholesale.”

— Richard Louv

87. “These days, unplugged places are getting hard to find.”

— Richard Louv

88. “As a species, we are most animated when our days and nights on Earth are touched by the natural world. We can find immeasurable joy in the birth of a child, a great work of art, or falling in love.”

— Richard Louv

89. “Parents are told to turn off the TV and restrict video game time, but we hear little about what the kids should do physically during their non-electronic time. The usual suggestion is organized sports. But consider this: The obesity epidemic coincides with the greatest increase in organized children’s sports in history.”

— Richard Louv

90. “Most people are either awakened to or are strengthened in their spiritual journey by experiences in the natural world.”

— Richard Louv

91. “Nature introduces children to the idea – to the knowing – that they are not alone in this world, and that realities and dimensions exist alongside their own.”

— Richard Louv

92. “Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually.”

— Richard Louv

93. “There is a real world, beyond the glass, for children who look, for those whose parents encourage them to truly see.”

— Richard Louv

94. “As we grow more separate from nature, we continue to separate from one another physically.”

— Richard Louv

95. “Natural playgrounds may decrease bullying.”

— Richard Louv

96. “The physical exercise and emotional stretching that children enjoy in unorganized play is more varied and less time-bound than is found in organized sports. Playtime – especially.”

— Richard Louv

97. “Roszak argued that modern psychology has split the inner life from the outer life, and that we have repressed our “ecological unconscious” that provides “our connection to our evolution on earth.”

— Richard Louv

98. “Our lives may be more productive, but less inventive.”

— Richard Louv

99. “A lot of people think they need to give up nature to become adults but that’s not true. However, you have to be careful how you describe and define ’nature.”

— Richard Louv

100. “On average, the greener a girl’s view from home, the better she concentrates, the less she acts impulsively, and the longer she can delay gratification.”

— Richard Louv