Quote

Of all the issues we are concerned with at present, the most basic issue, in my estimation, is that of human-earth relations.

Thomas Berry

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Berry
Age: 94 †
Born: 1914
Born: November 9
Died: 2009
Died: June 1
Author
Cultural Historian
Environmentalist
Theologian
Writer
Greensboro
North Carolina
Issues
Earth
Estimation
Human
Relations
Humans
Basic
Issue
Relation
Concerned
Present

More quotes by Thomas Berry

Image
We will go into the future as a single sacred community, or we will all perish in the desert.
Thomas Berry
Image
What is clear is that the earth is mandating that the human community assume a responsibility never assigned to any previous generation...Our task at this critical moment is to awaken the energies needed to create the new world and to evoke a universal communion of all parts of life.
Thomas Berry
Image
The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.
Thomas Berry
Image
The world of life, of spontaneity, the world of dawn and sunset and starlight, the world of soil and sunshine, of meadow and woodland, of hickory and oak and maple and hemlock and pineland forests, of wildlife dwelling around us, of the river and its wellbeing--all of this [is] the integral community in which we live.
Thomas Berry
Image
The reduction of the earth to an object simply for human's use/ possession is unthinkable in most traditional cultures... the earth belongs to itself and to all the component members of the community.
Thomas Berry
Image
The Universe is a unity, an interacting and genetically-related community of beings bound together in an inseparable relationship in space and time... The human is that being in whom the Universe activates, reflects upon, and celebrates itself in conscious self-awareness.
Thomas Berry
Image
We see quite clearly that what happens to the nonhuman, happens to the human. What happens to the outer world, happens to the inner world.
Thomas Berry
Image
We cannot discover ourselves without first discovering the universe, the earth, and the imperatives of our own being. Each of these has a creative power and a vision far beyond any rational thought or cultural creation of which we are capable.
Thomas Berry
Image
But if a peaceful world is beyond politics it is also beyond religions as these presently exist. A change is needed in every phase of human life. This lies mainly in recognition that the micro phase, the particular or national traditions, must find their context and fulfillment in the macro phase, the global or panhuman phase of human existence.
Thomas Berry
Image
The universe is the primary revelation of the divine, the primary scripture, the primary locus of divine-human communication.
Thomas Berry
Image
If the religious experience were simply some naive impression of the uninformed it would not have resulted in such intellectual insight, such spiritual exaltation, such spectacular religious ritual, or in the immense volume of song and poetry and literature and dance that humans have produced.
Thomas Berry
Image
The real skill is to raise the sails and to catch the power of the wind as it passes by.
Thomas Berry
Image
The future rests in the religious, political, economic and cultural capacity of humans to establish this larger context in which the particular traditions will find both support and fulfillment in a functional global community.
Thomas Berry
Image
As humans we are born of the Earth, nourished by the Earth, healed by the Earth.
Thomas Berry
Image
From a large planet of overwhelming magnitude, unlimited resources and endless mystery, the Earth has suddenly become a small planet, thoroughly explored, limited in resources, and reduced in mystery.
Thomas Berry
Image
All human professions, institutions, and activities must be integral with the earth as the primary self-nourishing , self-governing and self-fulfilling community. To integrate our human activities within this context is our way into the future.
Thomas Berry
Image
We must now understand that our own well-being can be achieved only through the well-being of the entire natural world around us.
Thomas Berry
Image
Everything is integral and interacts with everything else. This means that nothing is itself without everything else. There is a commonality, an integrity, an intimacy of the universe with itself.
Thomas Berry
Image
All human activities, professions, programs, and institutions must henceforth be judged primarily by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore, or foster a mutually enhancing human/Earth relationship.
Thomas Berry
Image
Our fulfillment is not in our isolated human grandeur, but in our intimacy with the larger earth community, for this is also the larger dimension of our being.
Thomas Berry