I like to live my life so that my loved ones give me the things I need as gifts and I give them the things they need. Frankly a society built around consumerism is hell

There are scarcities in drinking water when you pollute the groundwater with nitrates. There is a scarcity in diversity when you create huge cornfields with the same strain of corn so that when one disease strikes - which happened in the United States in the 70s - all the cornfields in the country are wiped out. That was the first time the U.S. realized the value of diversity in agriculture and began to discuss genetic resources and their conservation.

You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.

I saw brilliant ideas coming out of the [Chipko] movement that needed better articulation, that needed elaboration and systematic analysis. I just followed that and it's been very exciting.

The art of teaching is clarity and the art of learning is to listen.

Whatever happens to seed affects the web of life.

I think we will become disenchanted with the glamour of globalization.