Sitting at our back doorsteps, all we need to live a good life lies about us. Sun, wind, people, buildings, stones, sea, birds and plants surround us. Cooperation with all these things brings harmony, opposition to them brings disaster and chaos.

To create a mess in which we perish by our own inaction makes nonsense of our claim to consciousness and morality

I believe humanity is a pretty interesting lot, and they're all really busy doing and thinking interesting things.

We don't have to suppose we need oil, or governments, or anything.

There is no more time-wasting process than that of believing people will act, and then finding that they will not.

Stupidity is an attempt to iron out all differences, and not to use them or value them creatively.

The tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are designed or applied by those who hold power, and the reason for this is obvious and simple: to let people arrange their own food, energy and shelter is to lose economic and political control over them. We should cease to look to power structures, hierarchical systems, or governments to help us, and devise ways to help ourselves.