"A premise for our actions: we work to improve society rather than simply to aid the victims of society's misfunctioning."
- Dr. Loretta J. Williams

"Be the change you want to see."
- Gandhi

"Every religious tradition on which we draw has a reverence for life. We are a part of an intricate web of life. Every tradition on which we draw teaches that the ultimate expression of our spirituality is our action. Deep spirituality leads to action in the world. A deep reverence for life, love of nature's complex beauty and sense of intimate connection with the cosmos leads inevitably to a commitment to work for environmental and social justice."
- Peter Morales

"In the long run, you can never accomplish a worthy end with an unworthy means."
- Stephen Covey

"The Unitarian Church has done more than any other church to substitute character for creed, and to say that a man should be judged by his spirit; by the climate of his heart; by the autumn of his generosity; by the spring of his hope; that he should be judged by what he does; by the influence that he exerts, rather than by the mythology he may believe."
- Robert Ingersoll (Toast at Unitarian Club Dinner, New York, January 15, 1892.)

"Sustainability is another word for justice, for what is just is sustainable and what is unjust is not."
- Matthew Fox

“That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics…All ethics…rest upon a single premise: the individual is a member of a community of individual parts…The first rule of ecology is: keep all the parts.”
–Aldo Leopold
 
“We travel together, passengers in a little spaceship,…preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.”
–Adlai Stevenson, Statesman and Unitarian layperson.

“Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment.”
- Nobel Peace Prize Foundation  

“The Four Laws of Ecology: (1) Everything is connected to everything else; (2) Everything must go somewhere; (3) Nature knows best; and (4) There is no such thing as a free lunch.”
- Barry Commoner
 
“How do we care for all the children of all the species for all time?”
- William McDonough

"To work in the world lovingly means that we are defining what we will be for, rather than reacting to what we are against."
- Christina Baldwin

"Perhaps the greatest justice issue of all is intergenerational theft. The Eighth Commandment says "Thou shall not steal," but every day we live unsustainably we steal from our children and their children."
- Rev. Fred Small, First Church Unitarian, Littleton, Massachusetts

"The Great Work — the work of ensuring a just, healthy, beautiful, and sustainably life-giving world for future generations of all species."
- Thomas Berry

"Justice, properly understood, is systemic, aiming at the underlying causes of social problems, not at their symptoms. Treating symptoms alone might well be a soporific to cover fundamental injustice; it is like putting Band Aids on a cancer. Thus, food kitchens, however laudable, merely feed the victims of a fundamentally unjust social order instead of rooting out causes of hunger. A systemic approach challenges the underlying premises and workings of economies that produce 'poverty in the midst of plenty.' A systemic approach deals with policy issues, taxation, government welfare programs, and income distribution."
- Rev. Richard S. Gilbert, First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New York

“We believe that serving as stewards of the earth is a moral duty, and we will continue to do everything in our power to protect the environment.”
- Rev. Bill Sinkford, President of Unitarian Universalist Association

"As stewards of God's creation, we are called to confront and combat global warming, which endangers the poorest and most vulnerable of the earth's peoples, future human generations worldwide, and countless other species."
- Global WarmingSolution.org

"Global warming is a justice issue.  It’s a justice issue because global warming is theft – theft from our own children and grand children, of their right to a livable future.  It’s a justice issue, because its victims are, and will be, disproportionately poor and of color, those least able to contend with or to flee, the storms, droughts, famines, and rising tides of global warming."
- Rev. Fred Small, First Church Unitarian, Littleton, MA