Quotes

Maharishi Vedic Science Quotes

Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value. -R. Buckminster Fuller

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead

"Any regeneration project that fails to put environmental and social benefits at its very heart is unlikely to achieve anything more than a very short–lived spasm of spurious prosperity"- Jonathon Porritt (2007)

"First, climate change is the greatest long-term threat faced by humanity. It could cause more human and financial suffering than the two world wars and the great depression put together. All countries will be affected, but the poorest countries will be hit hardest. Secondly, the costs of inaction far outweigh the costs of action" - David Miliband

"To tackle climate change you don’t have to reduce your quality of life, but you do have to change the way you live " - Ken Livingstone.

"...a gastronome who does not have an environmental conscience is a fool, because without it he will be decieved in every way possible and will allow the earth, from which he draws the essence of his work, to die. In the same way, it may be said that an ecologist who is not also something of a gastronome is a sad character, who besides not being able to enjoy nature and missing out on the pleasure of eating, is indirectly prepared to do serious damage to the ecosystem by the simple act of eating incorrectly." -Carlo Petrini

"You can solve all the world's problems in a garden" - Geoff Lawton

"The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones" - Saudi Oil Minister

"We should feel ourselves fortunate to be part of such eternal renewal. Just by living we have achieved immortality – as grass grasshoppers, gulls, geese and other people. We are of the diversity we experience in every real sense.

If, as physical scientists assure us, we all contain a few molecules of Einstein, and if the atomic particles of our physical body reach to the outermost bounds of the universe, then we are all de facto components of all things. There is nowhere left for us to go if we are already everywhere, and this, in truth, all we will ever have or need. If we love ourselves at all, we should respect all things equally, and not claim any superiority over what are, in effect, our other parts. Is the hand superior to the eye? The bishop to the goose? The son to the mother? " -Bill Mollison

“We did not inherit the earth from our ancestors. We are borrowing it from our children.” Indian Proverb

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." -Mahatma Gandhi

"Don't fight forces, use them." -R. Buckminster Fuller

"Must one accept the community's way of life, their moral standards, or can one formulate one's own? Live it, uphold it, swim upstream against the static society? Or follow the path of least resistance?" -Scott Nearing

"The true artist is not one who draws or paints, but rather that person whose whole life is adjusted to beauty in every thought and action." - Havelock Ellis

"Do the best that you can in the place where you are, and be kind."- Scott Nearing

"The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them." - Paul Hawken

"Don't get me wrong: I love nuclear energy! It's just that I prefer fusion to fission. And it just so happens that there's an enormous fusion reactor safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could ever use in just about 8 minutes. And it's wireless!" - William McDonough, Fortune Brainstorm Conference, 2006

"Until you do what you believe in, you don't know whether you believe it or not." - Tolstoy

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." - (variously attributed)

"A person writing at night may put out the lamp, but the words he has written will remain. It is the same with the destiny we create for ourselves in this world." - Shakyamuni

"Food is power. Are you in control of yours?" -John Jeavons

"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe around us, the less taste we shall have for destruction." -Rachel Carson

"I wish they would remember that the charge to Peter was 'Feed my sheep,' not 'Try experiments on my rats,' or even 'Teach my performing dogs new tricks.'"

— C.S. Lewis "If we throw mother nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork."

"You must live as you think, or sooner or later you will think as you live." ------ Paul Valery

Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is here.

-Wendell Berry

"When a decision is made to cope with the symptoms of a problem, it is generally assumed that the corrective measures will solve the problem itself. They seldom do. Engineers cannot seem to get this through their heads. These countermeasures are all based on too narrow a definition of what is wrong. Human measures and countermeasures proceed from limited scientific truth and judgment. A true solution can never come about in this way." -Masanobu Fukuoka

"I see the earth as more than just a mixture of living things and inanimate matter. I see it as a tightly coupled entity where the evolution of the living things and the evolution of inorganic matter constitute a single and totally inseparable process, it's a whole system." - cool guy from the video

"Once we begin to take an interest in the enjoyment of food, and in finding out where our food comes from, we can begin to see the effects of these choices. When we shorten the distance—both literal and figurative—that our food travels to get to us, we are participating in the Slow Food movement. Slow Food is about coming together as a food community—connecting producers and co-producers, coming together on the farm, in the market, and at the table—to create and enjoy food that is good, clean and fair." -Slowfoodusa.org

"We are upsetting the atmosphere upon which all life depends. In the late'80s when i began to take climate change seriously, we referred to global warming as a "slowmotion catastrophe" one we expected to kick in perhaps generations later. Instead, the signs of change have accelerated alarmingly." -David Suzuki

"Global warming is probably the biggest threat that has ever faced humanity. That is what is most scary about it - and also what is most exciting. A problem of this scale presents an opportunity for grand solutions: more just and sustainable ways of life that will not only stabilize the climate but also reinvigorate community, restore environmental and human, health, and give us a secure world far more hopeful and fulfilling than the one we live in today." - Jared Duval, national director of the Sierra Student Coalition

"When we speak of Nature it is wrong to forget that we are ourselves a part of Nature. We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe." -Henri Matisse

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." -Margaret Mead

“I do not want to talk about what you understand about this world. I want to know what you will do about it. I do not want to know what you hope. I want to know what you will work for. I do not want your sympathy for the needs of humanity. I want your muscle.” — Robert Fulghum

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust

“Why don’t you stay in the wilderness? Because that isn’t where it’s at, its back in the city, back in downtown St. Louis, back in Los Angeles . . . . You go to nature for an experience of the sacred . . . to reestablish your contact with the core of things . . . The final test is whether your experience of the sacred in nature enables you to cope more effectively with the problems of humanity.” — Will Unsoeld, Mountaineer and Educator

“Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tide and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” — Teilhard de Chardin

“No – the way to master increasing complexity of life is not through more complexity. The way is to turn inward to that which unifies all – not the intellect but the spirit, and then to devise and put into operation new forms and modes of economic and social life that will truly and vigorously express that spirit. As an aid to that and as a corrective to our feverish over-mechanization, simplicity is not outmoded but greatly needed” - Richard Gregg, The Value of Voluntary Simplicity, 1930

“We desire to liberate ourselves from the cruder forms of exploitation; the plunder of the planet, the slavery of man and beast, the slaughter of men in war, and animals for food” -Helen and Scott Nearing “Living the Good Life” (1954)

“To make public protests against an evil, and yet live dependent on it and in support of a way of life that is the source of that evil, is an obvious contradiction and a dangerous one. If one disagrees with the nomadism and violence of our society, then one is under an obligation to take up some permanent dwelling place and cultivate the possibility of peace and harmlessness in it. If one deplores the destructiveness and wastefulness of the economy, then one is under obligation to live as far out on the margin of the economy as one is able: to be as economically independent of exploitive industries, to learn to need less, to waste less, to make things last, to give up meaningless luxuries, to understand and resist the language of salesman and public relations experts, to see through attractive packages, to refuse to purchase fashion or glamour or prestige. If one feels endangered by meaninglessness, then one is under an obligation to refuse meaningless pleasures and to resist meaningless work, to give up the moral comfort and the excuses of the mentality of specialization. - Wendell Berry

“What could be more radically or effectively opposite to a power plant than to live abundantly with no need for electricity?” - Wendell Berry

“With the creative ability of the minds fo people now living, coupled with the wisdom developed over the centuries, we may create a self sustaining flame of human happiness and growth” -William Copperthwaite

“Each of us has the potential to craft our own lives with our own hands – actively, joyfully, and nonviolently, drawing upon the wisdom of our ancestors, striving for justice in the present, and fulfilling our obligations to those who will inherit our legacy” - John Saltmarsh, introduction to A Handmade Life

"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." -William Butler Yeats

"In a biomimetic world, we would manufacture the way animals and plants do, using sun and simple compounds to produce totally biodegradable fibers, ceramics, plastics, and chemicals. Our farms, modeled on prairies, would be self-fertilizing and pest-resistant. To find new drugs or crops, we would consult animals and insects that have used plants for millions of years to keep themselves healthy and nourished. Even computing would take its cue from nature, with software that "evolves" solutions, and hardware that uses the lock-and-key paradigm to compute by touch.

In each case, nature would provide the models: solar cells copied from leaves, steely fibers woven spider-style, shatterproof ceramics drawn from mother-of-pearl, cancer cures compliments of chimpanzees, perennial grains inspired by tallgrass, computers that signal like cells, and a closed-loop economy that takes its lessons from redwoods, coral reefs, and oak-hickory forests." -Janine Benyus, Biomimicry

"When we stare this deeply into nature's eyes... we realize that all our inventions have already appeared in nature in a more elegant form and at a lot less cost to the planet. Our most clever architectural struts and beams are already featured in lily pads and bamboo stems. Our central heating and air conditioning are bested by the termite tower's steady 86 degrees F. Our most stealthy radar is hard of hearing compared to the bat's multi-frequency transmission. And our new 'smart materials' can't hold a candle to the dolphin's skin or the butterfly's proboscis. Even the wheel, which we always took to be a uniquely human creation, has been found in the rotary motor that powers the flagellum of the world's most ancient bacteria. Biomimics develop a high degree of awe, bordering on reverence. Now that they see what nature is truly capable of, nature-inspired innovations seem like a hand up out of the abyss." -Janine Benyus, Biomimicry

"It is hypocrisy to pretend to save forests, yet to buy daily newspapers and packaged food; to preserve native plants, yet rely on agrochemical production for food; and to adopt a diet that calls for broad-scale food production" - Bill Mollison

The larger quote the above was taken from: "It is my belief that we have two responsibilities:

1)To get our house and garden, our place of living, in order, so that it supports us;

2)To limit our population on Earth, or we ourselves become the final plague.

If we do not get our cities, homes, and gardens in order, so that they feed and shelter us, we must lay waste to all other natural systems. Thus, true conservationists have gardens which support their food needs, and are working to reduce their energy needs to a modest consumption, or to that which can be supplied by local wind , water forest, or solar power resources. It is hypocrisy to pretend to save forests, yet to buy daily newspapers and packaged food; to preserve native plants, yet rely on agrochemical production for food; and to adopt a diet that calls for broad-scale food production......Permaculture as a design system contains nothing new. It arranges what was always there in a different way so that it works to conserve energy or to generate more energy than it consumes. What is novel, and often overlooked, is that any system of total common sense design for human communities is revolutionary!" - Bill Mollison

“A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“I am a gastronome. No, not the glutton with no sense of restraint whose enjoyment of food is greater the more plentiful and forbidden it is. No, not the fool who is given to the pleasures of the table and indifferent to how the food got there. I like to know the history of a food and of the place that it comes from, I like to imagine the hands of the people who grew it, transported it, processed it, and cooked it before it was served to me. I do not want the food I consume to deprive others in the world of food. I like traditional farmers, the relationship they have with the earth, and the way they appreciate what is good. The good belongs to everyone; pleasure belongs to everyone, for it is human nature.” -Carlo Petrini, Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should be Good, Clean, and Fair (Originally published in Italian as Bueno, Polito, et Justo.)

"To the extent that people separate themselves from nature, they spin out further and further from the center. At the same time, the centripetal effect asserts itself and the desire to return to nature arises. But if people merely become caught up in reacting, moving to the left or to the right, depending on conditions, the result is only more activity. The non-moving point of origin, which lies outside the realm of relativity, is passed over, unnoticed. I believe that even “returning-to-nature” and anti-pollution activities, no matter how commendable, are not moving toward a genuine solution if they are carried out solely in reaction to the overdevelopment of the present age. Nature does not change, although the way of viewing nature invariably changes from age to age. No matter the age, natural farming exists forever as the wellspring of agriculture.” - Masonubu Fukuoka, One Straw Revolution

"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings" - Masonubu Fukuoka

"The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do."

— Galileo Galilei

When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in muddled, incomplete and confusing form. ...For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope. — Freeman Dyson

"A theory is more impressive the greater is the simplicity of its premises, the more different are the things it relates, and the more extended its range of applicability. Therefore, the deep impression which classical thermodynamics made on me. It is the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced, that within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts will never be overthrown."

- Albert Einstein

"Sustainability does not require sacrifice or deprivation. Rather it means exploiting the latest technologies, reducing waste, reusing resources, adopting lean production and better logistics practices, and making sound investments in efficient and productive capacities. In fact, sustainability is not only free; for a market leader it is actually better than free because it provides a real competitive advantage." —Pasquale Pistorio, President & CEO, STMicroelectronics

"A community economy is not an economy in which well-placed persons can make a 'killing'. It is an economy whose aim is generosity and a well-distributed and safeguarded abundance." -- Wendell Berry

“A basic question that can be asked two ways is:

	What can I get from this land, or person?

	What does this land or person have to give if I cooperate with them?

Of these two approaches, the first leads to war and waste, the latter to peace and plenty” Bill Mollison, Desuigner’s Manual pg 3

To make the world work for all 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.

Bucky Fuller

Think of it. We are traveling on a planet revolving around the sun in almost perfect symmetry. We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all, to feed everybody, clothe everybody, give every human on Earth a chance. We dwell instead on petty things. We kill each other. We build monuments to.

Bucky Fuller

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

...but nothing is more thrilling.

Niccolo Machiavelli

"...It starts with observation of what is already there. A good designer will spend more time listening to the landscape and its inhabitants, asking what each of them needs and has to offer, than in any other part of the design process. This observation, and the thought process that follows it are the real work of permaculture design" - Patrick Whitehead, Permaculture in a Nutshell

“The way the French look at it, cooking is not a detached process of transforming food. It is an extension of the land itself, a natural prolongation, a system of value adding where the end product is an extension of the dirt where it started. The French are profoundly land attached, or as they say, terrien" - Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow, Sixty Million Frenchman Can't Be Wrong

Thomas Jefferson - "If nature has made any one thing less susceptable than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea... No one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."

Nader Khalili - "Anybody in this world should be able to build a shelter for his or her family with the simplest of elements, available to all: the Elements - earth, water, air, and fire. A family should be able to learn the techniques, move to a piece of empty land, and then - with some water and a few simple tools-build themselves a house using the earth under thier feet. That simple yet profound technology exists today. We have inherited it from our ancestors and we must learn how to use it and improve on it." From Ceramic Houses

Scott Nearing - "Do the best you can in the place that you are and be kind"

Masanobu Fukuoka - "The true purpose of farming is not the growing of plants but the cultivation and perfection of human beings"

Wendell Berry - "We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it." - Natural capitalism

Amory Lovins - "....we realized that the conventional wisdom is mistaken in seeing priorities in economic, environmental and social policy as competing. The best solutions are based not on tradeoffs or "balance" between these objectives but on design integration achieving all of them together - at every level from technical devices to production systems to companies to economic sectors to entire cities and societies " - Natural Capitalism

Dr William Albrecht - "You have to have a vison. Unless you do, nature will never reveal herself" - ad from acres, usa

Richard St. Barb Baker - "What shall it profit us, as a nation or dominion, if we balance our budget at the cost of the destruction of the earth beneath our feet? When we find that Kingdom which is within each one of us, and live in it, then all the things we need will be given us. Then and only then, shall we become as wise as the trees"

Maharishi Maharishi Yogi - "For all thinkers and researchers in any area of science and technology, it is vital to maintain wakefulness of the total potential of Natural Law - self referral consciousness. Only this will ensure purity of principles on the theoretical level of scientific research and pollution free technology"

Vedic Knowledge for Everyone

Henry David Thoreau - "Live in each season as it passes; Breathe the air, Drink the drink, Taste the fruit…..”

Edwin O. Wilson - “The number of ants on the earth is 1000 trillion, and their weight is about the same as all the humans on earth”

Some wise dude – “One must live the way one thinks less one begins to think the way one lives”

Grrn web site –

 “If you are no for zero waste then how much waste are you for?”

Lovins Quote from “Design Outlaws on the Ecological Frontier” – "We confuse ourselves into thinking that we are producing oil, when what we are really doing is diggin git up and burning it”

man must go back to nature for information - thomas paine

"In a house or an office, how beautiful is something if it makes you sick? On a planetary level, how beautiful is something if it's destroying the planet?? I think peopleare starting to recognize that s an agenda." William McDonough

time it takes for sunshine energy falling on the us to equal fossil fuel energy consumed by the us in one year: 40 minutes.

we are using fossil fuels at 250,000 times their rate of formulation

what i stand for is what i stand on wendell berry

A future with clean renewable energy driving progress

According to a study conducted by researchers Fredrick McCarthy and Margaret MacArthur, the average workday for men in aboriginal communities in Western Arnhem Land, Australia, including all the time spent on economic activities such as hunting and tool repair, adds up to three hours and forty-five minutes; for women, for their plant collecting and food preparation, the average workday is three hours and fifty minutes. Anthropologist Richard Lee reports that in Africa, the average Dobe Bushman’s workweek is fifteen hours, or two hours and nine minutes a day- with only 65 percent of the population working at all.

The Nature of Design: Ecology, Culture, and Human Intention David W. Orr Fourth, ecological design at all levels has to do with system structure, not the rates of change. The focus of ecological design is on systems and “patterns that connect” (Bateson 1979, 3-4). When we get the structure right, “the desired result will occur more or less automatically without further human intervention.” (Ophuls 1992, 288). Consider two different approaches to the need for mobility. The Amish communities described in chapter 4 are structured around the capacity of the horse, which serves to limit human mischief, economic costs, consumption, dependence on the outside, and ecological damage, while providing time for human sociability, sources of fertilizer, and the peace of mind that comes with unhurriedness. In the Amish culture, the horse is a solar-powered, self replicating, multifunctional structural solution that eliminates the need for continual management and regulation of people. Most of us are not about to become Amish, but we need to discover or own equivalent of the horse.

Tripling us use of biomass could provide as much as 20 billion in new income for farmers and rural communities and reduce glogal warming emission by the same amount as taking 70 million cars off the road, according to the US Department of Energy…… wind energy alone could provide 1.2 billion in new income for farmers and rural landowners by 2020 and 80,000 new jobs. - Union of concerned scientists fact sheet on renewable energy and agriculture

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labour of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.

Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after." - Henry David Thoreau

" Wilderness is a place where the wild potential is fully expressed, a diversity of living and nonliving beings flourishing according to their own sorts of order. In ecology we speak of "wild systems." When an ecosystem is fully functioning, all the members are present at the assembly. To speak of wilderness is to speak of wholeness. Human beings came out of that wholeness, and to consider the possibility of reactivating membership in the Assembly of All Beings is in no way regressive." -- Gary Snyder

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not man the less, but nature more." -Lord Byron

"I have amazing news for you. Man is not alone on this planet. He is part of a community, upon which he depends absolutely." - Daniel Quinn, from Ishmael.