When the idea of permaculture came to me, it was like a shift in the brain, and suddenly I couldn't write it down fast enough.

The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.

If you let the world roll on the way it's rolling, you're voting for death. I'm not voting for death.

Say you're working for a big overseas aid organization. You can't leave home in a Mercedes Benz, travel 80 kilometers to work in a great concrete structure where there are diesel engines thundering in the basement just to keep it cool enough for you to work in, and plan mud huts for Africa! You can't get the mud huts right if you haven't got things right where you are. You've got to get things right, working for you, and then go and say what that is.

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

I can easily teach people to be gardeners, and from them, once they know how to garden, you'll get a philosopher.

You won't get cooperation out of a hierarchical system. You get enforced directions from the top, and nothing I know of can run like that.