1910 — Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA

The quality of life depends on the ability of society to teach its members how to live in harmony with their environment — defined first as the family, then with the community, then with the world and its resources.

The environment that people live in is the environment that they learn to live in, respond to, and perpetuate. If the environment is good, so be it. But if it is poor, so is the quality of life within it.

Source: The Remarkable Life and Career of Ellen Swallow Richards: Pioneer in Science and Technology, by Pamela Curtis Swallow (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2014).