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Bill Mollison

Bill Mollison Books

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“. . . every society that grows extensive lawns could produce all its food on the same area, using the same resources, and . . . world famine could be totally relieved if we devoted the same resources of lawn culture to food culture in poor areas. These facts are before us. Thus, we can look at lawns, like double garages and large guard dogs, [and Humvees and SUVs] as a badge of willful waste, conspicuous consumption, and lack of care for the earth or its people. Most lawns are purely cosmetic in function. Thus, affluent societies have, all unnoticed, developed an agriculture which produces a polluted waste product, in the presence of famine and erosion elsewhere, and the threat of water shortages at home. The lawn has become the curse of modern town landscapes as sugar cane is the curse of the lowland coastal tropics, and cattle the curse of the semi-arid and arid rangelands. It is past time to tax lawns (or any wasteful consumption), and to devote that tax to third world relief. I would suggest a tax of $5 per square metre for both public and private lawns, updated annually, until all but useful lawns are eliminated.”

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“Anger and even fury. I have no other motivation. Anger about the senseless distraction. The only thing that keeps me going is anger. I don't have any love in me at all. I hate community. Two things make me furious. Spiritualism, and community. People who talk about community want to manage other people. I grew up in a village. And people say that's a community, but it isn't. It's a lot of individuals, following the rules. And spiritualism, spiritual people are often very greedy, avaricious, and waste a hell of a lot of time. Nobody deserves what they are promised by spiritual people. And some people promise them eternal life. I think it's a horrific punishment to get eternal life. Ordinary people should never have such punishment visited on them”

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“Each such cycle is a unique event; diet, choice, selection, season, weather, digestion, decomposition and regeneration differ each time it happens. Thus, it is the number of such cycles, great and small, that decide the potential for diversity. We should feel ourselves privileged to be part of such eternal renewal. Just by living we have achieved immortality - as grass, grasshoppers, gulls, geese and other people. We are of the diversity we experience in every real sense. If, as physical scientists assure us, we all contain a few molecules of Einstein, and if the atomic particles of our physical body reach to the outermost bounds of the universe, then we are all de facto components of all things. There is nowhere left for us to go if we are already everywhere, and this is, in truth, all we will ever have or need. If we love ourselves at all, we should respect all things equally, and not claim any superiority over what are, in effect, our other parts. Is the hand superior to the eye? The bishop to the goose? The son to the mother?”

Permaculture
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“Don’t worry about being able to identify each of these plants (in your designs for clients). The world is full of botanists and horticulturists. All you have to do is design. You don’t have to be a botanist; you don’t have to be a bulldozer driver; you don’t have to be a fence builder; you don’t have to be an architect. What the designer has to do is look at the relationships.”

WorldLooksAbleWorryDesignPlantDesignerDriversArchitectClientsFenceBuilderBulldozers
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“The end result of the adoption of permaculture strategies in any country or region will be to dramatically reduce the area of the agricultural environment needed by the households and the settlements of people, and to release much of the landscape for the sole use of wildlife and for re-occupation by endemic flora.”

PeopleEndsCountryUseResultsEnvironmentNeededAreasStrategyReleaseLandscapeRegionsOccupationSoleHouseholdAdoptionWildlifeSettlementPermacultureEnd ResultsFlora
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“You can hit a nail on the head, or cause a machine to do so, and get a fairly predictable result. Hit a dog on the head, and it will either dodge, bite back, or die, but it will never again react in the same way. We can predict only those things we set up to be predictable, not what we encounter in the real world of living and reactive processes.”

WorldWayRealDiesCausesProcessResultsDogMachinesEncountersReal WorldBitesNailsPredictableDodge
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“I confess to a rare problem - gynekinetophobia, or the fear of women falling on me - but this is a rather mild illness compared with many affluent suburbanites, who have developed an almost total zoophobia, or fear of anything that moves. It is, as any traveller can confirm, a complaint best developed in the affluent North American, and it seems to be part of blue toilet dyes, air fresheners, lots of paper tissues, and two showers a day.”

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“Too often, the pastoralist blames the weeds and seeks a chemical rather than a management solution; too seldom do we find an approach combining the sensible utilisation of grasshoppers and grubs as a valuable dried-protein supplement for fish or food pellets, and a combination of soil conditioning, slashing, and de-stocking or re-seeding to restore species balance.”

PastBalanceApproachSolutionsManagementBlameSpeciesFishesValuableCombinationSoilWeedChemicalsSensibleConditioningProteinSupplementsCombiningPermacultureStockingsGrasshoppers
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“Life is also busy transporting and overturning the soils of earth, the stones, and the minerals. The miles-long drifts of sea kelp that float along our coasts may carry hundreds of tons of volcanic boulders held in their roots. I have followed these streams of life over 300 km, and seen them strand on granite beaches, throwing their boulders up on a 9,000 year old pile of basalt, all the hundreds of tons of which were carried there by kelp.”

YearsMayLongEarthLife IsSeaStonesRootsBusyMilesBeachStreamsSoilThrowingCoastFloatsMineralsStrandsGraniteBoulders
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“A great many film stars perched on unstable ravine edges in the canyon systems of Los Angeles will, like the cemeteries there, eventually slide down to join their unfortunate fellows in the canyon floors, with mud, cars, and embalmed or living film stars in one glorious muddy mass. We should not lend our talents to creating such spectacular catastrophes.”

ShouldFilmStarsTalentCarCreatingMassFellowsEdgesGloriousGreat MenLos AngelesUnfortunateCatastropheMudSlidesSpectacularCemeteryUnstableMuddyCanyonsFilm Stars
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“Brambles, in particular, protect and nourish young fruit trees, and on farms bramble clumps (blackberry or one of its related cultivars) can be used to exclude deer and cattle from newly set trees. As the trees (apple, quince, plum, citrus, fig) age, and the brambles are shaded out, hoofed animals come to eat fallen fruit, and the mature trees (7 plus years old) are sufficiently hardy to withstand browsing. Our forest ancestors may well have followed some such sequences for orchard evolution, assisted by indigenous birds and mammals.”

YearsWellsMayAgeYoungUsedAnimalTreeParticularEvolutionProtectBirdFruitForestsFallenRelatedApplesPlusMatureFarmsAncestorSequenceIndigenousDeerCattleHardyMammalsOrchardFigsPlumsBlackberriesFruit TreesBrowsingCitrusQuince
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“Security can be found in renunciation of ownership over people, money, and real assets; to gain, keep or protect that which others need for periods of legitimate access. A lending library enables people to help themselves to information; a locked-up book collection is useful only to the person who owns it.”

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“At least half of every city is wrong. From latitude 30 degrees to latitude 60, say, you've got to have the long axis of the house facing the sun. If the land is cut up into squares, that makes half of all houses wrong if they face the road. Even houses way in the country, and way off the road, face the bloody road. And from there, you just go wronger all the way.”

IfsWayLongCountryFacesHouseCitiesHalfSunCuttingLandDegreesSquaresBloodyAxesLatitude
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“There are a few societies that show signs of having been very rational about the physics of construction and the physics of real life. Some of the old middle-Eastern societies had downdraft systems over whole cities, and passive, rapid-evaporation ice-making systems. They were rational people using good physical principles to make themselves comfortable without additional sources of energy.”

PeopleRealWholeShowsEnergyCitiesPrinciplesMiddleSourceComfortablePhysicsReal LifeRationalIceConstructionPassiveEasternRapidsEvaporation
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“Once you've said to yourself, "But I'm not using my physics in my house," or "I'm not using my ecology in my garden, I've never applied it to what I do," it's like something physical moves inside your brain. Suddenly you say, "If I did apply what I know to how I live, that would be miraculous!" Then the whole thing unrolls like one great carpet. Undo one knot, and the whole thing just rolls downhill.”

IfsKnowsSaidWholeWould BeMovingHouseBrainGardenPhysicsEcologyCarpetMiraculousLike SomethingKnots
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“There are only four things in all cleaners - whether it's shampoo, laundry detergent, whatever.You buy them in bulk and you mix them up properly, and they all work. It doesn't matter if they call the stuff ecologically friendly or have dolphins diving around on the label - it still has these damn four things in it. Anything else is just unnecessary additions to make it smell good or color it blue when it goes down the toilet.”

IfsStillsMatterStuffFourColorBlueSmellLabelsDamnFriendlyWorking ItUnnecessaryToiletsCleanersLaundryDivingDolphinsShampooLaundry Detergent
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