David Suzuki

David Suzuki

29 quotes

Few Canadian scientists and environmentalists have been quoted as widely as David Suzuki (b. 1936), whose insights reach well beyond their original context. Beyond his television and radio series, documentaries and books about nature and the environment, David Suzuki proved equally skilled at capturing ideas in a sentence or two. Our collection holds 36 quotes from David Suzuki, each offering a different angle on Environmental, Health, Change, Nature, and Future. One standout: "We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone's arguing over where they're going to sit."

“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

Health

All Quotes by David Suzuki

“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

Hope

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

— David Suzuki

Education

“We must pay greater attention to keeping our bodies and minds healthy and able to heal. Yet we are making it difficult for our defences to work. We allow things to be sold that should not be called food. Many have no nutritive value and lead to obesity, salt imbalance, and allergies.”

— David Suzuki

Food

“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

Food

“Doing all we can to combat climate change comes with numerous benefits, from reducing pollution and associated health care costs to strengthening and diversifying the economy by shifting to renewable energy, among other measures.”

— David Suzuki

Change

“We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone's arguing over where they're going to sit.”

— David Suzuki

Car

“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

Diet

“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

Health

“The government's desire to expand global trade may be understandable, but we mustn't give away too much. We must tell our elected representatives to at least delay the Canada-China FIPA until it has been examined more thoroughly, and to reconsider the inclusion of investor-state arbitration mechanisms in all trade deals.”

— David Suzuki

Government

“The damage that climate change is causing and that will get worse if we fail to act goes beyond the hundreds of thousands of lives, homes and businesses lost, ecosystems destroyed, species driven to extinction, infrastructure smashed and people inconvenienced.”

— David Suzuki

Change

“Beyond reducing individual use, one of our top priorities must be to move from fossil fuels to energy that has fewer detrimental effects on water supplies and fewer environmental impacts overall.”

— David Suzuki

Environmental

“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

Technology

“From year to year, environmental changes are incremental and often barely register in our lives, but from evolutionary or geological perspectives, what is happening is explosive change.”

— David Suzuki

Change

“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

Environmental

“Thanks to evolution, our bodies have powerful ways to ward off illness and infection and enable us to live long and healthy lives. Why, then, do health costs continue to climb at unsustainable and frightening rates?”

— David Suzuki

Health

“If we want to address global warming, along with the other environmental problems associated with our continued rush to burn our precious fossil fuels as quickly as possible, we must learn to use our resources more wisely, kick our addiction, and quickly start turning to sources of energy that have fewer negative impacts.”

— David Suzuki

Environmental

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

— David Suzuki

Future

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

— David Suzuki

Failure

“As parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts we need to start getting out into nature with the young people in our lives. Families play a key role in getting kids outside.”

— David Suzuki

Nature

“We can't blame children for occupying themselves with Facebook rather than playing in the mud. Our society doesn't put a priority on connecting with nature. In fact, too often we tell them it's dirty and dangerous.”

— David Suzuki

Nature