Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Robin Wall Kimmerer
218 quotes
“I don't have much patience with food proselytizers who refuse all but organic, free-range, fair-trade gerbil milk. We each do what we can.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wild things should not be for sale.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have constructed an artifice, a Potemkin village of an ecosystem where we perpetrate the illusion that the things we consume have just fallen off the back of Santa's sleigh, not been ripped from the earth. The illusion enables us to imagine that the only choices we have are between brands.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nanabozho did not know his parentage or his origins—only that he was set down into a fully peopled world of plants and animals, winds, and water. He was an immigrant too. Before he arrived, the world was all here, in balance and harmony, each one fulfilling their purpose in the Creation. He understood, as some did not, that this was not the "," but one that was ancient before he came.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Time is not a river running inexorably to the sea, but the sea itself—its tides that appear and disappear, the fog that rises to become rain in a different river. All things that were will come again.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wabunong—the East—is the direction of knowledge. We send gratitude to the East for the chance to learn every day, to start anew.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Names are the way we humans build relationship, not only with each other but with the living world.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The South, zhawanong, the land of birth and growth. From the South comes the green that covers the world in spring, carried on the warm winds.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be indigenous is to protect life on earth.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By honoring the knowledge in the land, and caring for its keepers, we start to become indigenous to place.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To carry a gift is also to carry a responsibility.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To become indigenous is to grow the circle of healing to include all of Creation.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A path scented with sweetgrass leads to a landscape of forgiveness and healing for all who need it.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All powers have two sides, the power to create and the power to destroy. We must recognize them both, but invest our gifts on the side of creation.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The plants are our oldest teachers.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The earth is so richly endowed that the least we can do in return is to pay attention.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The composer Aaron Copland got it right. An n spring is music for dancing. The woods dance with the colors of wildflowers, nodding sprays of white dogwood and the pink froth of redbuds, rushing streams and the embroidered solemnity of dark mountains.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness. Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A teacher comes, they say, when you are ready. And if you ignore its presence, it will speak to you more loudly. But you have to be quiet to hear.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In some Native languages the term for plants translates to "those who take care of us.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the , the root word for land is the same as the word for mind. Gathering roots holds up a mirror between the map in the earth and the map of our minds. This is what happens, I think, in the silence and the singing and with hands in the earth. At a certain angle of that mirror, the routes converge and we find our way back home.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Caring is not abstract. The circle of ecological compassion we feel is enlarged by direct experience of the living world, and shrunken by its lack.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In learning reciprocity, the hands can lead the heart.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Far out beyond the surf they felt it. Beyond the reach of any canoe, half a sea away, something stirred inside them, an ancient clock of bone and blood that said, "It’s time." Silver-scaled body its own sort of compass needle spinning in the sea, the floating arrow turned toward home. From all directions they came, the sea a funnel of fish, narrowing their path as they gathered closer and closer, until their silver bodies lit up the water, redd-mates sent to sea, prodigal salmon coming home.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So he walks the path at nightfall with a bundle in his hand. Into a nest of cedar bark and twisted grass he lays the coal and feeds it with his breath. It dances and then subsides. Smoke pools darkly as the grasses melt to black and then erupt into flame, climbing one stem and then another. All around the meadow, others do the same, setting in the grass a crackling ring of fire that quickens and gathers, white smoke curling upward in the fading light, breathing into itself, panting across the slope until its convective gasp sets the night alight. A beacon to bring their brothers home.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Black against the golden grass and many inches deep into prairie earth, the trail follows the natural contours as if centuries of footfalls have preceded my own. It’s just me, the grass, and the sky, and two bald eagles riding the thermals. Cresting the ridge releases me into an explosion of light and space and wind. My head catches fire at the sight. I cannot tell you more of that high and holy place. Words blow away. Even thought dissipates like wisps of cloud sailing up the headland. There is only being.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is an odd dichotomy we have set for ourselves, between loving people and loving land. We know that loving a person has agency and power—we know it can change everything. Yet we act as if loving the land is an internal affair that has no energy outside the confines of our head and heart.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention. If you stand together and profess a thing before your community, it holds you accountable. Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm. These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic. These are ceremonies that magnify life.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is what we field biologists live for: the chance to be outside in the vital presence of other species, who are generally way more interesting than we are. We get to sit at their feet and listen.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Doing science with awe and humility is a powerful act of reciprocity with the more-than-human world.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science can be a way of forming intimacy and respect with other species that is rivaled only by the observations of traditional knowledge holders. It can be a path to kinship.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The marvel of a basket is in its transformation, its journey from wholeness as a living plant to fragmented strands and back to wholeness again as a basket. A basket knows the dual powers of destruction and creation that shape the world. Strands once separated are rewoven into a new whole. The journey of a basket is also the journey of a people.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When a language dies, so much more than words are lost. Language is the dwelling place of ideas that do not exist anywhere else. It is a prism through which to see the world.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A place becomes a home when it sustains you, when it feeds you in body as well as spirit.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Losing a plant can threaten a culture in much the same way as losing a language. [...] The history of the plants is inextricably tied up with the history of the people, with the forces of destruction and creation.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For grief can also be comforted by creation, by rebuilding the homeland that was taken. The fragments, like ash splints, can be rewoven into a new whole.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When times are easy and there’s plenty to go around, individual species can go it alone. But when conditions are harsh and life is tenuous, it takes a team sworn to reciprocity to keep life going forward. In a world of scarcity, interconnection and mutual aid become critical for survival.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our indigenous herbalists say to pay attention when plants come to you; they’re bringing you something you need to learn.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To plant trees is an act of faith.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Old-growth cultures, like , have not been exterminated. The land holds their memory and the possibility of regeneration. They are not only a matter of ethnicity or history, but of relationships born out of reciprocity between land and people.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If there is meaning in the past and in the imagined future, it is captured in the moment. When you have all the time in the world, you can spend it, not on going somewhere, but on being where you are.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One thing I’ve learned in the woods is that there is no such thing as random. Everything is steeped in meaning, colored by relationships, one thing with another.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Maybe there is no such thing as time; there are only moments, each with its own story.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Creation stories offer a glimpse into the worldview of a people, of how they understand themselves, their place in the world, and the ideals to which they aspire. Likewise, the collective fears and deepest values of a people are also seen in the visage of the monsters they create.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are all complicit. We've allowed the "market" to define what we value so that the redefined common good seems to depend on profligate lifestyles that enrich the sellers while impoverishing the soul and the earth.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a terrible punishment to be banished from the web of reciprocity, with no one to share with you and no one for you to care for. I remember walking a street in Manhattan, where the warm light of a lavish home spilled out over the sidewalk on a man picking through the garbage for his dinner. Maybe we've all been banished to lonely corners by our obsession with private property. We've accepted banishment even from ourselves when we spend our beautiful, utterly singular lives on making more money, to buy more things that feed but never satisfy.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fear for me is that the world has been turned inside out, the dark side made to seem light. Indulgent self-interest that our people once held to be monstrous is now celebrated as success. We are asked to admire what our people viewed as unforgivable. The consumption-driven mind-set masquerades as "quality of life" but eats us from within. It is as if we've been invited to a feast, but the table is laid with food that nourishes only emptiness, the black hole of the stomach that never fills. We have unleashed a monster.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Swimming was banned in 1940. Beautiful Onondaga Lake. People spoke of it with pride. Now they barely speak of it at all, as if it were a family member whose demise was so shameful that the name never comes up.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source