“Nature cannot be destroyed, and the rotten and wasteful consumer societies cannot prevail. There is a field where the production of wealth can be infinite: the field of knowledge, of culture and art in all its manifestations, including a painstaking ethical, esthetic and solidarity-based education, a full spiritual life, socially sound, mentally and physically healthy, without which it would be impossible to talk about quality of life.”
“Human beings are capable of working either the most wonderful deeds or the worst inequities. Their amazing intelligence enables them to use the inalterable laws of nature to do right or wrong.”
"Nature dealt us a heavy blow but it is encouraging to know that our struggle will continue steadily and restlessly".
"In the course of barely a century, a large part of the hydrocarbon reserves that nature took hundreds of millions of years to create have been burned and released into the air and the seas as gas and by-product waste. The quest to seek profits at any cost, with no ethical or moral principles or foresight whatsoever, has left a devastating wake for current and future generations".
"(...) many things threatening the life of the planet today, aside from war, like climate changes, the destruction of the ozone layer, global warming, the poisoning of the air, the rivers and the seas. These things threaten the life of the entire planet, thus all of the peoples have a common cause with the people of Latin America, North America and Europe".
"The crisis will have an especially negative impact on the struggle for sustainable development, the preservation of the environment and the protection of nature from the merciless destruction to which it is being subjected, and which is causing the poisoning of the waters and the atmosphere, the destruction of the ozone layer, deforestation, desertification, and the extinction of animals and plants. How could this possibly not be taken into the slightest account?"
"Hardly 30 years ago, few people in the world discussed the environment. Ideas or themes linked to the destruction of the forests, soil erosion and salinity, climate change, the disappearing ozone layer, melting icecaps, whole cities and nations doomed to fatally disappear beneath the sea, polluted air and water; overexploited oceans seemed to be inventions of doomsday scientists and not pressing realities".
"World politics and economics moved forward at such a blind and chaotic pace that concepts like the environment, biological diversity, the preservation of nature, dessertification, holes in the ozone layer and climatic changes were barely known or even mentioned a few decades ago.
"They have poisoned oceans and rivers and contaminated the air; they have weakened and opened holes in the ozone layer and saturated the atmosphere with gases that impair climate conditions with catastrophic effects that we are starting to feel".
"The tyranny of an order that imposes blind, anarchic and chaotic principles leading the human species toward an abyss must be stopped. Nature must be saved. National identities must be preserved. The culture of every country must be protected. Equality, fraternity and true liberty must prevail. The unfathomable gap between the rich and the poor countries, and within each country, must not continue to widen it must rather diminish until one day it ceases to exist.