List of Wade Davis Quotes

Mining In Bc's Sacred Headwaters Is Like Drilling For Oil In The Sistine Chapel

On Paper I Would Be A Rather Bold Individual In Our Culture.

In The West We Cling To The Past Like Limpets. In Haiti The Present Is The Axis Of All Life. As In Africa, Past And Future Are But Distant Measures Of The Present, And Memories Are As Meaningless As Promises.

Change Is No Threat To Culture.

To Have That Powder Blown Up Your Nose Is Rather Like Being Shot Out Of A Rifle Barrel Lined With Baroque Paintings And Landing On A Sea Of Electricity.

All Cultures Through All Time Have Constantly Been Engaged In A Dance With New Possibilities For Life. Change Is The One Constant In Human History.

We Accept It As Normal That People Who Have Never Been On The Land, Who Have No History Or Connection To The Country, May Legally Secure The Right To Come In And, By The Very Nature Of Their Enterprises, Leave In Their Wake A Cultural And Physical Landscape Utterly Transformed And Desecrated. What's More, In Granting Such Mining Concessions, Often Initially For Trivial Sums To Speculators From Distant Cities, Companies Cobbled Together With Less History Than My Dog, The Government Places No Cultural Or Market Value On The Land Itself.

The Problem Is That Those Of Us Sympathetic With The Plight Of Indigenous People View Them As Quaint And Colorful, But Somehow Reduced To Margins Of History As The Real World [(our World)] Moves On We Will Be Known As An Era In Which We Stood By And Either Actively Endorsed Or Passively Accepted The Massive Destruction Of Both Biological And Cultural Diversity On The Planet.

Its Haunting To Realize That Half Of The Languages Of The World Are Teetering On The Brink Of Extinction.

Language Is An Old-growth Forest Of The Mind.

You Know, Once Something Freezes, It's Solid. That's The Key To The Arctic - They Didn't Fear The Cold, They Made Use Of It.

Only, In Haiti, I Realized, Is It Possible To Drink Rum And Haggle With A God.