A Quote by Marilyn Ferguson
In the most important areas, as individuals and countries, we don't change our behavior until we have our backs to the wall.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
Even though it's important for all of us to change our light bulbs and the vehicles we drive, it's much more important to change our laws and policies. I drive a hybrid and we've changed our light bulbs and windows and installed solar panels and geothermal ground source heat pumps and most everything else. But putting the burden on individuals to solve this global crisis is ultimately not going to be the most effective way to solve it.
What we need is a 'Smart Wall' to solve our 21st century border problems. A Smart Wall would use sensor, radar and surveillance technologies to detect and track incursions across our border so we can deploy efficiently our most important resource, the men and women of Border Patrol, to perform the most difficult task - interdiction.
We are here on earth to work-to work long, hard, arduous hours, to work until our backs ache and our tired muscles knot, to work all our days. This mortal probation is one in which we are to eat our bread in the sweat of our faces until we return to the dust from whence we came. Work is the law of life; it is the ruling principle in the lives of the Saints.
Global climate change is real and we have a limited time to change our behavior or live with the consequences. We can all help by making small changes in our lives to letting our voice be heard by our governing bodies. As has always been the case in this country, if the people demand change, it will come.
This is life. Our bodies change. Our minds change. Our hearts change. Things are always evolving. I hope we can be supportive of each other and try to really have each other's backs, especially when we don't know the whole story.
Healthy areas that are richest in information are those areas in the wild where we can get all the information that's available to us within our human hearing range. The most valuable information throughout human evolution has been faint sounds. We tend to think in our modern world that if it's loud, if it grabs our attention, it's important. We get a lot of that in advertising. But in nature, it's the faintest sound that's important; it has determined, in the past of our ancestors, perhaps, if they will live or die. Faint sounds are the earliest clues of newly arriving information.
If there is one sweeping generalization I can make without fear of contradiction, it is that 'change' is the scariest word in the English language Nothing will change in our lives until we change our own behavior. Insight won't do it. Understanding why we do the self-defeating things we do won't make us stop doing them. Nagging and pleading with the other person to change won't do it. We have to act. We have to take the first step down a new road.
If you set yourself a goal for energy usage in your house, if you have to look at a graph on your phone, you probably won't change your behavior. But if you have a clock on the wall that changes color from green to red if you're using more energy than you've planned, then that actually can change your behavior. There are a lot of things to be done in that world that actually have an impact on our daily lives.
We need to invest in healthcare, in education, in the sciences. And in so doing, we will tackle one of the most intractable problems we face, which is gross wealth inequality. We can't fight climate change without dealing with inequality in our countries and between our countries.
Our bodies change our minds and our minds can change our behavior and our behavior can change our outcomes.
I think better of our behaviour as individuals than I do when we see ourselves as members of a group. It's when people start forming groups that we have to watch our backs.
The truth is that we can overhaul our surroundings, renovate our environment, talk a new game, join a new club, far more easily than we can change the way we respond emotionally. It is easier to change behavior than feelings about that behavior.
The behavior of the Occupy Wall Street protesters has raised some curious questions about the continuing double standards in our society. When it comes to fascistic leftist behavior, our mainstream media overlooks and excuses it - while conservatives are demonized and blamed for every dead sparrow that falls from the sky.
When we spend our lives waiting until we're perfect or bulletproof before we walk into the arena, we ultimately sacrifice relationships and opportunities that may not be recoverable, we squander our precious time, and we turn our backs on our gifts, those unique contributions that only we can make.
God is the God of the people who are at their wits end, who are right up against it with their backs to the wall, and He delights to come to our help when we need Him most.
If we each take responsibility in shifting our own behavior, we can trigger the type of change that is necessary to achieve sustainability for our race or this planet. We change our planet, our environment, our humanity every day, every year, every decade, and every millennia.
Related Authors
Ayn Rand Quotes
Russian
Writer
C. S. Lewis Quotes
British
Writer
Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes
French
Writer
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
English
Writer
H. L. Mencken Quotes
American
Writer
Haruki Murakami Quotes
Japanese
Writer
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
American
Writer
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Russian
Writer
Mark Twain Quotes
American
Writer
Mason Cooley Quotes
American
Writer
Ray Bradbury Quotes
American
Writer
Samuel Johnson Quotes
English
Writer
Seth Godin Quotes
American
Writer
Sherrilyn Kenyon Quotes
American
Writer
Suzanne Collins Quotes
American
Writer