The end result of the adoption of permaculture strategies in any country or region will be to dramatically reduce the area of the agricultural environment needed by the households and the settlements of people, and to release much of the landscape for the sole use of wildlife and for re-occupation by endemic flora.

Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.

I think Americans are so poor it's pitiful, because you don't understand the natural world at all.

If you lend your skills to other systems that you don't really believe in, then you might as well never have lived. You haven't expressed yourself.

There are a few societies that show signs of having been very rational about the physics of construction and the physics of real life. Some of the old middle-Eastern societies had downdraft systems over whole cities, and passive, rapid-evaporation ice-making systems. They were rational people using good physical principles to make themselves comfortable without additional sources of energy.

You can't live like a Bushman or an Aborigine anymore, so they've got to rethink the whole basis of how they're going to live. Permaculture helps you do that easily.

Use all the skills you have in relation to others - and that way we can do anything.