Any intelligent fool can invent further complications, but it takes a genius to retain, or recapture, simplicity.

Even bigger machines, entailing even bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the nonviolent, the elegant and beautiful.

An entirely new system of thought is needed, a system based on attention to people, and not primarily attention to goods. . . .

Study how a society uses its land, and you can come to pretty reliable conclusions as to what its future will be.

Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology toward the organic, the gentle, the elegant and beautiful.

We think work with the brain is more worthy than work with the hands. Nobody who thinks with his hands could ever fall for this.

The heart of the matter, as I see it, is the stark fact that world poverty is primarily a problem of two million villages, and thus a problem of two thousand million villagers.