Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A language Older Than Words
Love does not imply pacifism.
All writers are propagandists.
Civilization can never be sustainable.
We must learn how to think like the planet.
Forests precede us and deserts dog our heels.
Civilization is not and can never be sustainable.
Learning has to come from doing, not intellectualizing.
We cannot hope to create a sustainable culture with any but sustainable souls.
Within this culture wealth is measured by one's ability to consume and destroy.
If your community is founded on an injustice, that injustice cannot be questioned.
From the beginning, this culture - civilization - has been a culture of occupation.
a real partnership in which all parties help all others to be more fully themselves
We have a need for enchantment that is as deep and devoted as our need for food and water.
There is always money to kill people. There is never enough money for life affirming ends.
A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of green paper.
I think a lot of us are increasingly recognizing that the dominant culture is killing the planet.
Writing is really very easy. Tap a vein and bleed onto the page. Everything else is just technical.
If you only had a limited time to life (which is of course the case), how would you spend your time?
In order to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves.
The stories we are told shape the way we see the world, which shapes the way we experience the world.
Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.
Hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.
Like the layers of an onion, under the first lie is another, and under that another, and they all make you cry.
We have been too kind to those who are killing the planet. We have been inexcusably, unforgivably, insanely kind.
If the world is presented as resources to be exploited, then, more than likely, you're going to exploit the world.
Maud Gonne was - excuse me, Maud Gonne was central to the Gaelic literature revival. She wrote plays, and she sang.
When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to "hope" at all. We simply do the work.
I thought a forest was made up entirely of trees, but now I know that the foundation lies below ground, in the fungi.
I think it's very important for us to start to build a culture of resistance, because what we're doing isn't working, clearly.
The global industrial economy is the engine for massive environmental degradation and massive human (and nonhuman) impoverishment.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that any way of living that's based on the use of non-renewable resources won't last.
As is true for most people I know, I've always loved learning. As is also true for most people I know, I always hated school. Why is that?
To believe Christianity stands in opposition to slavery is at best to think anachronistically and at worst to not understand Christianity.
If your homeland were invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?
I am only so beautiful as the character of my relationships, only so rich as I enrich those around me, only so alive as I enliven those I greet.
If we wish to stop the atrocities, we need merely to step away from the isolation. There is a whole world waiting for us, ready to welcome us home.
Every morning when I awake I ask myself whether I should write or blow up a dam. I tell myself I should keep writing, though I'm not sure that's right
A culture that values production over life values the wrong things, because it will produce things at the expense of living beings, human or otherwise.
If any thing can be predicated as universally true of uncultivated man, it is that he will not labour beyond what is absolutely necessary to maintain his existence.
The task we all face as human beings ... is to find and become who we are. The task teachers face is to find their own way of teaching, one that manifests who they are.
I get asked quite often if I'm an anarchist. If they want to put a label on me, that's fine. What is most important to me is to live in a world that is not being murdered.
So long as we only believe in the justice of the state, of the law-made by those in power, to serve those in power-so long will we continue to be exploited by those in power.
No matter what we call it, poison is still poison, death is still death, and industrial civilization is still causing the greatest mass extinction in the history of the planet.
My audience consists mainly of people who already recognize how bad this culture is, and I want to push them to become more radical. It doesn't really matter to me if they are Left or Right.
For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.
I no longer see Descartes' statement as arbitrary. It is representative of our culture's narcissism. This narcissism leads to a disturbing disrespect for direct experience and a negation of the body.
Where will you drive your own picket stake? Where will you choose to make your stand? Give me a threshold, a specific point at which you will finally stop running, at which you will finally fight back.
If you see yourself as entitled to a resource, and if you're not willing or incapable of seeing this other as a being with whom you can and should be in relation with, then you're going to take the resource.
To pretend that civilization can exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation.