Top 100 Richard Louv Quotes
#1. By letting our children lead us to their own special places we can rediscover the joy and wonder of nature.
Richard Louv
#2. A lot of people think they need to give up nature to become adults but that's not true. However, you have to be careful how you describe and define 'nature.'
Richard Louv
#3. You probably learned from your failures more than from success.
Richard Louv
#4. For the young, food is from Venus; farming is from Mars
Richard Louv
#5. If no one ever tried anything, even what some folks say is impossible, no one would ever learn anything. So you just keep on trying and maybe some day you'll try something that will work.
Richard Louv
#6. Thoughtful exposure of youngsters to nature can even be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorders and other maladies.
Richard Louv
#7. Numerous studies document the benefits to students from school grounds that are ecologically diverse and include free play areas, habitats for wildlife, walking trails, and gardens.
Richard Louv
#8. I played around our yard some and talked to the fence posts, sung songs and made the weeds sing ... - WOODY GUTHRIE
Richard Louv
#9. A widening circle of researchers believes that the loss of natural habitat, or the disconnection from nature even when it is available, has enormous implications for human health and child development. They say the quality of exposure to nature affects our health at an almost cellular level.
Richard Louv
#10. Stress reduction, greater physical health, a deeper sense of spirit, more creativity, a sense of play, even a safer life-these are the rewards that await a family then it invites more nature into children's lives.
Richard Louv
#11. 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
#12. Genetically, we are essentially the same creatures as we were at the beginning. We are still hunters and gatherers.
Richard Louv
#13. 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
#14. Unlike television, nature does not steal time; it amplifies it. Nature offers healing for a child living in a destructive family or neighborhood.
Richard Louv
#15. The logical extension of synthetic nature is the irrelevance of "true" nature
the certainty that it's not even worth looking at. (62)
Richard Louv
#16. Kids and adults pay a price for too much tech, and it's not wholesale.
Richard Louv
#17. 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
#18. Some kids don't want to be organized all the time. They want to let their imaginations run; they want to see where a stream of water takes them.
Richard Louv
#19. Roszak argued that modern psychology has split the inner life from the outer life, and that we have repressed our "ecological unconscious" that provides "our connection to our evolution on earth.
Richard Louv
#20. Nature was still out there. There was less of it, to be sure, but it was there just the same.
Richard Louv
#21. 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
#22. Quality of life isn't measured only by what we gain, but also by what we trade for it.
Richard Louv
#23. Nature - the sublime, the harsh, and the beautiful - offers something that the street or gated community or computer game cannot.
Richard Louv
#24. Nature inspires creativity in a child by demanding visualization and the full use of the senses.
Richard Louv
#25. To take nature and natural play away from children may be tantamount to withholding oxygen.
Richard Louv
#26. Nature is one of the best antidotes to fear.
Richard Louv
#27. One of my students told me that every time she learns the name of a plant, she feels as if she is meeting someone new. Giving a name to something is a way of knowing it.
Richard Louv
#28. Every child needs nature. Not just the ones with parents who appreciate nature. Not only those of a certain economic class or culture or set of abilities. Every child.
Richard Louv
#29. As a species, we are most animated when our days and nights on Earth are touched by the natural world. We can find immeasurable joy in the birth of a child, a great work of art, or falling in love.
Richard Louv
#30. Children need nature for the healthy development of their senses, and therefore, for learning and creativity.
Richard Louv
#31. Reading stimulates the ecology of the imagination.
Richard Louv
#32. 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
#33. Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature.
Richard Louv
#34. Nature can help people recover from "normal psychological wear and tear" -
Richard Louv
#35. Nature offers a well from which many, famous or not, draw a creative sense of pattern and connection.
Richard Louv
#36. As we grow more separate from nature, we continue to separate from one another physically.
Richard Louv
#37. Kids are plugged into some sort of electronic medium 44 hours per week.
Richard Louv
#38. A natural environment is far more complex than any playing field.
Richard Louv
#39. We have such a brief opportunity to pass on to our children our love for this Earth, and to tell our stories. These are the moments when the world is made whole. In my children's memories, the adventures we've had together in nature will always exist.
Richard Louv
#40. This principle holds that a reconnection to the natural world is fundamental to human health, well-being, spirit, and survival.
Richard Louv
#41. Nature is beautiful, but not always pretty.
Richard Louv
#42. Just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep, they may very well need contact with nature.
Richard Louv
#43. Mothers tend to be more direct. Fathers talk to other fathers about their kids more metaphorically. It's a different way of communication.
Richard Louv
#44. You can solve any large or complex problem by breaking it down into smaller, simpler problems.
Richard Louv
#45. It was frightening and wonderful to surrender to the wind's power.
Richard Louv
#46. For a new generation, nature is more abstraction than reality.
Richard Louv
#47. The times I spent with my children in nature are among my most meaningful memories-and I hope theirs.
Richard Louv
#48. Nature is about smelling, hearing, tasting, seeing ...
Richard Louv
#49. 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
#50. Wilson defines biophilia as the urge to affiliate with other forms of life.
Richard Louv
#51. We cannot protect something we do not love, we cannot love what we do not know, and we cannot know what we do not see. Or hear. Or sense.
Richard Louv
#52. We tend to block off many of our senses when we're staring at a screen. Nature time can literally bring us to our senses.
Richard Louv
#53. Now, more than ever, we need nature as a balancing agent.
Richard Louv
#54. I have a soft spot in my heart for tree houses, which have always imparted certain magic and practical knowledge.
Richard Louv
#55. We need the tonic of wilderness. - Henry David Thoreau
Richard Louv
#56. I do not trust technology. I mean, I don't think we're in any danger of kids, you know, doing without video games in the future, but I am saying that their lives are largely out of balance.
Richard Louv
#57. Children who played outside every day, regrdless of weather, had better motor coordination and more ability to concentrate.
Richard Louv
#58. Other species help children develop empathy.
Richard Louv
#59. These days, unplugged places are getting hard to find.
Richard Louv
#60. What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. - CROWFOOT, CHIEF OF THE SIKSIKA FIRST NATION, 1890
Richard Louv
#61. Freud regarded childhood as a time in which our lowest, most animalistic impulses are strongest.
Richard Louv
#62. These ecstatic moments of delight or fear, or both, "radioactive jewels buried within us, emitting energy across the years of our lives," as Chawla eloquently puts it, are most often experienced in nature during formative years.
Richard Louv
#63. There is another possibility: not the end of nature, but the rebirth of wonder and even joy.
Richard Louv
#64. This seems clear enough: When truly present in nature, we do use all our senses at the same time, which is the optimum state of learning.
Richard Louv
#65. We do not raise our children alone ... Our children are also raised by every peer, institution, and family with which they come in contact. Yet parents today expect to be blamed for whatever results occur with their children, and they expect to do their parenting alone.
Richard Louv
#66. If a child never sees the stars, never has meaningful encounters with other species, never experiences the richness of nature, what happens to that child?
Richard Louv
#67. In medieval times, if someone displayed the symptoms we now identify as boredom, that person was thought to be committing something called acedia, a 'dangerous form of spiritual alienation'
a devaluing of the world and its creator.
Richard Louv
#68. By bringing nature into our lives, we invite humility.
Richard Louv
#69. In the meantime, relax. Take a break. Look at the clouds. Listen to the wind. Let the birds do the heavy lifting. A
Richard Louv
#70. Going out into nature was one outlet that I had, which truly allowed me to calm down and not think or worry.
Richard Louv
#72. Most people are either awakened to or are strengthened in their spiritual journey by experiences in the natural world.
Richard Louv
#73. This tree house became our galleon, our spaceship, our Fort Apache ... Ours was a learning tree. Through it we learned to trust ourselves and our abilities.
Richard Louv
#74. What if more and more parents, grandparents and kids around the country band together to create outdoor adventure clubs, family nature networks, family outdoor clubs, or green gyms? What if this approach becomes the norm in every community?
Richard Louv
#75. 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
#76. There is a real world, beyond the glass, for children who look, for those whose parents encourage them to truly see.
Richard Louv
#77. The children and nature movement is fueled by this fundamental idea: the child in nature is an endangered species, and the health of children and the health of the Earth are inseparable.
Richard Louv
#78. Leave part of the yard rough. Don't manicure everything. Small children in particular love to turn over rocks and find bugs, and give them some space to do that. Take your child fishing. Take your child on hikes.
Richard Louv
#79. 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
#80. Nature-deficit disorder describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illness. This disorder can be detected in individuals, families, and communities.
Richard Louv
#81. Isolated patches of wild land are valuable to know, as are isolated people.
Richard Louv
#82. The real cultural war is between the culture of narcissism and what might be called the culture of renewal.
Richard Louv
#83. Increasingly the evidence suggests that people benefit so much from contact with nature that land conservation can now be viewed as a public health strategy.
Richard Louv
#84. And old Indian saying: 'It's better to know one mountain than to climb many.
Richard Louv
#85. Quite simply, when we deny our children nature, we deny them beauty.
Richard Louv
#86. Until recently, most environmental organizations offered only token attention to children. Perhaps their lack of zeal stems from an unconscious ambivalence about children, who symbolize or represent overpopulation. So goes the unspoken mantra: We have met the enemy and it is our progeny.
Richard Louv
#87. There is a canyon within a reasonable distance of nearly every school in the city, [Elaine Brooks] pointed out. What an exciting prospect, she said - a network of natural libraries for teaching children about the region's rare and fragile ecosystems - and about themselves.
Richard Louv
#88. Nature is imperfectly perfect, filled with loose parts and possibilities, with mud and dust, nettles and sky, transcendent hands-on moments and skinned knees.
Richard Louv
#89. Nature does not steal time, it amplifies it.
Richard Louv
#90. The more we know, superficially, the less we penetrate, vertically.
Richard Louv
#91. 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
#92. Being close to nature, in general, helps boost a child's attention span.
Richard Louv
#93. We can conserve energy and tread more lightly on the Earth while we expand our culture's capacity for joy.
Richard Louv
#94. Here is the beginning of understanding: most parents are doing their best, and most children are doing their best, and they're doing pretty well, all things considered.
Richard Louv
#95. One of the main benefits of spending time in nature is stress reduction.
Richard Louv
#96. 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
#97. It's easy to blame the nature-deficit disorder on the kids' or the parents' back, but they also need the help of urban planners, schools, libraries and other community agents to find nature that's accessible.
Richard Louv
#98. In nature, a child finds freedom, fantasy, and privacy: a place distant from the adult world, a separate peace.
Richard Louv
#99. In our bones we need the natural curves of hills, the scent of chaparral, the whisper of pines, the possibility of wildness.
Richard Louv
#100. 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
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