The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.

Permaculture challenges what we're doing and thinking - and to that extent it's sedition.

The worst thing about permaculture is that it's extremely successful, but it has no center, and no hierarchy.

I teach self-reliance, the world's most subversive practice. I teach people how to grow their own food, which is shockingly subversive. So, yes, it’s seditious. But it’s peaceful sedition.

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.

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

If you only do one thing, collect rainwater.