Anything that's any good is self-perpetuating.

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.

Once you've said to yourself, "But I'm not using my physics in my house," or "I'm not using my ecology in my garden, I've never applied it to what I do," it's like something physical moves inside your brain. Suddenly you say, "If I did apply what I know to how I live, that would be miraculous!" Then the whole thing unrolls like one great carpet. Undo one knot, and the whole thing just rolls downhill.

If you're a simple person today, and want to live simply, that is awfully seditious. And to advise people to live simply is more seditious still.

I gave one permaculture course in Botswana, and now my students are out in the bloody desert in Namibia teaching Bushmen - whose language nobody can speak - to be very good permaculture people.

A really failing society has a lot of rules (or laws).

Permaculture offers a radical approach to food production and urban renewal, water, energy and pollution. It integrates ecology, landscape, organic gardening, architecture and agro-forestry in creating a rich and sustainable way of living. It uses appropriate technology giving high yields for low energy inputs, achieving a resource of great diversity and stability. The design principles are equally applicable to both urban and rural dwellers