Luck is earned. Luck is working so hard at your craft, service or enterprise that sooner or later you get a break.
Paul HawkenWhen asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and arenโt pessimistic, you donโt understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you arenโt optimistic, you havenโt got a pulse.
Paul HawkenThat appropriation of resources and the transformation of them into goods and services through the European production system characterized, and characterizes to this day, all industrial systems including the information age.
Paul HawkenWhile there may be no "right" way to value a forest or a river, there is a wrong way, which is to give it no value at all. How do we decide the value of a 700-year-old tree? We need only to ask how much it would cost to make a new one, or a new river, or even a new atmosphere.
Paul HawkenWe need to revise our economic thinking to give full value to our natural resources. This revised economics will stabilize both the theory and the practice of free-market capitalism. It will provide business and public policy with a powerful new tool for economic development, profitability, and the promotion of the public good.
Paul HawkenHow is it that we have created an economic system that tells us it is cheaper to destroy the earth and exhaust its people than to nurture them both? Is it rational to have an pricing system which discounts the future and sells off the past? How did we create an economic system that confused capital liquidation with income?
Paul Hawken