Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Richard Louv
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: January 1
Author
Journalist
Writer
Look
Flower
Measured
Looks
Health
Preservation
Children
Progress
Represents
Things
Teach
Interaction
Beauty
Worthwhile
Patented
Nature
Environmental
Ecosystem
Also
Potential
Interactions
Doe
Healing
Ecosystems

More quotes by Richard Louv

Image
An indoor (or backseat) childhood does reduce some dangers to children but other risks are heightened, including risks to physical and psychological health, risk to children's concept and perception of community, risk to self-confidence and the ability to discern true danger
Richard Louv
Image
To take nature and natural play away from children may be tantamount to withholding oxygen.
Richard Louv
Image
Now, my tree-climbing days long behind me, I often think about the lasting value of those early, deliciously idle days. I have come to appreciate the long view afforded by those treetops. The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.
Richard Louv
Image
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
Image
Nature-the sublime, the harsh, and the beautiful-offers something that the street or gated community or computer game cannot. Nature presents the young with something so much greater than they are it offers an environment where they can easily contemplate infinity and eternity.
Richard Louv
Image
The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.
Richard Louv
Image
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
Image
There’s no denying the benefits of the Internet. But electronic immersion, without a force to balance it, creates the hole in the boat — draining our ability to pay attention, to think clearly, to be productive and creative.
Richard Louv
Image
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
Image
From 1997 to 2003, there was a decline of 50 percent in the proportion of children nine to twelve who spent time in such outside activities as hiking, walking, fishing, beach play, and gardening, according to a study by Sandra Hofferth at the University of Maryland.
Richard Louv
Image
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
Image
If we desire a kinder nation, seeing it through the eyes of children is an eminently sensible endeavor: A city that is pro-child,for example, is also a more humane place for adults.
Richard Louv
Image
There's a generation now that didn't grow up in nature. Some of these adults are parents and they know that nature is good for their kids but they don't know where to start.
Richard Louv
Image
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
Image
Natural play strengthens children's self-confidence and arouses their senses-their awareness of the world and all that moves in it, seen and unseen.
Richard Louv
Image
Prize the natural spaces and shorelines most of all, because once they're gone, with rare exceptions they're gone forever. In our bones we need the natural curves of hills, the scent of chapparal, the whisper of pines, the possibility of wildness. We require these patches of nature for our mental health and our spiritual resilience.
Richard Louv
Image
If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It's a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children it's even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it's a lot more fun.
Richard Louv
Image
What if a tree fell in the forest and no one knew it's biological name? Did it exist?
Richard Louv
Image
Time spent in nature is the most cost-effective and powerful way to counteract the burnout and sort of depression that we feel when we sit in front of a computer all day.
Richard Louv
Image
Studies of children in playgrounds with both green areas and manufactured play areas found that children engaged in more creative forms of play in the green areas.
Richard Louv