Sustainability Quotes

What is the point of "labor saving" if by making work effortless we make it poor, and if by doing poor work we weaken our bodies and lose conviviality and health? (Health is Membership, pg. 93)

So imagine that fans of our products or services no longer simply consume and use them. Now we are creating a new opportunity for them to both participate directly in the development of the products but also benefit from a share of the profits too.

Alas, our technology has marched ahead of our spiritual and social evolution, making us, frankly, a dangerous people.

Can we actually suppose that we are wasting, polluting, and making ugly this beautiful land for the sake of patriotism and the love of God? Perhaps some of us would like to think so, but in fact this destruction is taking place because we have allowed ourselves to believe, and to live, a mated pair of economic lies: that nothing has a value that is not assigned to it by the market; and that the economic life of our communities can safely be handed over to the great corporations. (from 'Compromise, Hell!' published in the November/December 2004 issue of ORION magazine)

I live in one of the best places, bar none, to appreciate the wild natural environment. I also live in one of the most politically difficult places to work on its behalf: Alaska.

...a woman smart and persistent enough that even a PhD in psychology hasn't clouded her insight into how people think and act.

While the word charity connotes a single act of giving, justice speaks to right living, of aligning oneself with the world in a way that sustains rather than exploits the rest of creation.

To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There's no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there's a sense in which it doesn't matter that these people's dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I -- or does anyone else -- have to destroy them.At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world?

Each minute wasted with a shark is a missed opportunity to enjoy being with a Dolphin

The aquatic environment must be safeguarded by men. God created mankind to care for the environment and all the living resources.

If you can't reuse or repair an item, do you ever really own it? Do you ever really own it? Do you ever develop the sense of pride and proprietorship that comes from maintaining an object in fine working order?We invest something of ourselves in our material world, which in turn reflects who we are. In the era of disposability that plastic has helped us foster, we have increasingly invested ourselves in objects that have no real meaning in our lives. We think of disposable lighters as conveniences -- which they indisputably are; ask any smoker or backyard-barbecue chef -- and yet we don't think much about the tradeoffs that that convenience entails.

The greatest lesson came with the realization that good food cannot be reduced to single ingredients. It requires a web of relationships to support it.

Deep inside, we still have a longing to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination

Markets cannot meet the needs of the very poor. The desperately poor are not consumers who will create an immediate profit.

My goal is to draw a line with some 'flavor' to it.

Only when we start to distinguish reality from fantasy that we can humbly, with eyes wide open, forge loving and sustainable connections with others.

Why is it that so many people start to value money so much that they trade in most of the hours and years of their life in order to get it?

Of course, chaos can lead to failure and extinction. But so can order. Far more nations, people, and ideas die of atrophy than die from revolution. Both order and chaos are necessary ingredients for long run success - for sustainability.

If we are going to start calling industrial corn sustainable, then we might as well say that petroleum is a renewable resource if you're willing to wait long enough.

Another principle that I believe can be justified by scientific evidence so far is that nobody is going to emigrate from this planet not ever....It will be far cheaper, and entail no risk to human life, to explore space with robots. The technology is already well along....the real thrill will be in learning in detail what is out there...It is an especially dangerous delusion if we see emigration into space as a solution to be taken when we have used up this planet....Earth, by the twenty-second century, can be turned, if we so wish, into a permanent paradise for human beings...

They have taken the idea of nonharming, of gentleness toward the earth, to a very radical level. Even the weeds are not enemies.

Our entire system, in an economic sense, is based on restriction. Scarcity and inefficiency are the movers of money; the more there is of any resource the less you can charge for it. The more problems there are, the more opportunities there are to make money.This reality is a social disease, for people can actually gain off the misery of others and the destruction of the environment. Efficiency, abundance and sustainability are enemies of our economic structure, for they are inverse to the mechanics required to perpetuate consumption.This is profoundly critical to understand, for once you put this together you begin to see that the one billion people currently starving on this planet, the endless slums of the poor and all the horrors of a culture due to poverty and pravity are not natural phenomenon due to some natural human order or lack of earthly resources. They are products of the creation, perpetuation and preservation of artificial scarcity and inefficiency.

Often I'll go outside and just place my hands on the soil, even if there's no work to do on it. When I am filled with worries, I do that and I can feel the energy of the mountains and of the trees.

Sustainability is best illustrated by those who sell food … just so they afford something to eat.

Make no mistake. The greatest destroyer of ecology. The greatest source of waste, depletion and pollution. The greatest purveyor of violence, war, crime, poverty, animal abuse and inhumanity. The greatest generator of personal and social neurosis, mental disorders, depression, anxiety. Not to mention the greatest source of social paralysis, stopping us from moving into new methodologies for personal health, global sustainability and progress on this planet, is not some corrupt government or legislation.Not some rogue corporation or banking cartel.Not some flaw of human nature and not some secret cabal that controls the world.It is the socioeconomic system itself at its very foundation.

We don't think a sustainable society need be stagnant, boring, uniform, or rigid. It need not be, and probably could not be, centrally controlled or authoritarian. It could be a world that has the time, the resources, and the will to correct its mistakes, to innovate, to preserve the fertility of its planetary ecosystems. It could focus on mindfully increasing quality of life rather than on mindlessly expanding material consumption and the physical capital stock.

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

These steel monstrosities screamed night and day, blotted out the starlit skies and Northern Lights with flashing red strobes, slaughtered thousands of bats and entire flocks of birds banished tourism and wildlife, made people sick and drove them from their now-valueless homes.

Sustainable change, after all, depends not upon compliance with external mandates or blind adherence to regulation, but rather upon the pursuit of the greater good.

CEOs should be measured by the value they create into the community, the shareholders and the members of the company.

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.

. . . .how and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of the world--and what is to become of it. To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life afford quite as much satisfaction.

Weapons never stay in their boxes. Once a weapon has been manufactured, sooner or later someone will use it. If it were possible to bring about true and lasting peace by force of arms, then we should turn all our factories into weapons factories. But that is impossible. Even though it is difficult to try to bring about peace through inner transformation, it is the only way of establishing sustainable peace in the world.

I think all people want freedom, but they've got this idea inserted into their head about money.

The pressure of adversity is the most powerful sustainer of accountability. It's as though everything you do is multiplied by 50 in order to surpass those with a head-start. I was never capable of slacking when at the threshold of failure.

No matter how big a company is, one has to always look at business basics.

Time is what we have in this life, and how we use it determines what our life is.

Align your activity with your vision. Being consistent and intentional with your daily activities will result in sustainable success.

It shouldn't be the consumer's responsibility to figure out what's cruel and what's kind, what's environmentally destructive and what's sustainable. Cruel and destructive food products should be illegal. We don't need the option of buying children's toys made with lead paint, or aerosols with chlorofluorocarbons, or medicines with unlabeled side effects. And we don't need the option of buying factory-farmed animals.

I see entrepreneurship, like many other activities, as a type of mission. A mission by which we can provide better life chances and quality for both our current and future generations.

Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves. This we know: the earth does not belong to man - man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood that unites one's family. All things are connected.

I'm not one of those academics that don't do shit but reads about it. The difference is, I do shit. I have a proof of concept and it works.

Social entrepreneurship represents the opportunity to redefine the role of government.

Taking measures to ensure stability could assure the long-term economic growth and welfare at a global level

Ban privileges. The rules of the game should be the same to all players, regardless of their size, location, or any other criteria

Laten we op zoek gaan naar 'vreugde' in plaats van naar eerlijk voedsel en schone lucht en een gezondere toekomst op een bewoonbare planeet! Alsof geluk volstaat om ons te beschermen tegen de gevolgen van winst-waanzin.

The New Economy brings the need to tap people’s curiosity, quest for knowledge and understanding, in order to develop a sustainable society.

There is a deeper point to be made here, however, having to do with the specificity of everything. One of the great failings of our culture is the nearly universal belief that there can be anything universal. We as a culture take the same approach to living in Phoenix as in Seattle as in Miami, to the detriment of all these landscapes. We turn wild trees to standardized two-by-fours. We turn living fish into fish sticks. But every fish is different from every other fish. Every student is different from every other student. Every place is different from every other place. If we are ever to hope to begin to live sustainably in place (which is the only way to live sustainably), we will have to remember specificity is everything.

Monitor, transparently, and enforce the separation of Democracy powers: Legislative; Executive; Judicial

Love foods that sustain and protect you, and love you back.

Banks should actively encourage companies that are doing a good job on environmental and social fronts. Banking for community development is the banking of future.

I finally understood that I couldn’t avoid working to provide for myself, but that can also be a wonderfulthing, a beautiful thing.

Ban short-selling, high speed trading and all other instruments of pure speculation

For organisations to become truly sustainable we believe it is essential to create a new organisation model: a more cooperative leader, a new way for people to cooperate inside the organisation and a new way for organisations to be measured by society.

Monoculture is mono for the earth.

Nature is inexhaustibly sustainable if we care for it. It is our universal responsibility to pass a healthy earth onto future generations.

Gardening and making your own soap and home-birthing your babies are fine, but these are inherently limited actions. If we want to see genuine food safety, if we want to see sustainable products, if we want to see a better women's health system, and if we want these things for everyone, not just the privileged few with the time and education to DIY it, then we need large social changes.

What art should do, I think, is advance the generation into the next era. It should be one step ahead of the ordinary, ahead of what is already known. Art is what pulls on the next age. I’m not saying that my art is that, but that it would be good if it could be.

We've got to think now, in real terms, for that seventh generation . . . We've got to get back to spiritual law if we are to survive.

If left unexecuted, even the greatest competitive strategies are not worth the paper on which they were written.