I wish I was a despot that I might save the noble, the beautiful trees that are daily falling sacrifice to the cupidity of their owners, or the necessity of the poor. The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a deep concern for the destruction of trees and nature, equating their unnecessary felling to a crime.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson laments the loss of trees due to human greed and the struggles of poverty. He feels that if he held absolute power, he would take action to protect these noble living beings from being cut down for selfish reasons or necessity. Jefferson's passionate stance highlights the importance of environmental conservation and reflects an ethical viewpoint that sees the destruction of nature as a grave injustice.
In practice
In a speech advocating for tree conservation, this quote can emphasize the importance of protecting our natural resources.
The firmness with which the (American) people have withstood the... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false and to form a correct judgment between them.
I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
We must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements...if we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance.
A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
Environmental justice, for those of you who may not be familiar with the term, goes something like this: no community should be saddled with more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than any other.
The animals of the planet are in desperate peril... Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.
Hold out your hands to feel the luxury of the sunbeams.
When you meet chimps you meet individual personalities. When a baby chimp looks at you it's just like a human baby. We have a responsibility to them.
I wait. Now the night flows back, the mighty stillness embraces and includes me; I can see the stars again and the world of starlight. I am twenty miles or more from the nearest fellow human, but instead of loneliness I feel loveliness. Loveliness and a quiet exultation.
Apparently there is a great discovery or insight which our culture is deliberately designed to suppress, distort, and ignore. That is that nature is some kind of minded entity. That nature is not simply the random flight of atoms through electromagnetic fields. Nature is not the empty, despiritualized , lumpen matter that we inherit from modern physics. But it is instead a kind of intelligence, a kind of mind.
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