Quotessence
Home / Authors / Derrick Jensen
Derrick Jensen

Derrick Jensen Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsCultureCivilizationHumansWayDoePeopleWorldPlanetsThinkingMeanNeedsTreeWantBelieveEconomicGivingKnowsLongLying

Famous Derrick Jensen Quotes

“To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There's no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there's a sense in which it doesn't matter that these people's dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I -- or does anyone else -- have to destroy them. At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world?”

PeopleWorldWayWantDoeStillsMatterDreamSocialEconomicEffectsCivilizationDestructiveSustainabilityReverseEmbeddedSocial SystemsIntertwined
Author:Derrick Jensen
Create image

“So many indigenous people have said to me that the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that even the most open-minded westerners generally view listening to the natural world as a metaphor, as opposed to the way the world really is. Trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us.”

PeopleWorldWaySaidNaturalDifferencesViewsTreeRocksListeningRiversFundamentalsWesternMetaphorIndigenousNatural WorldOpen MindedIndigenous PeopleWesterners
Book:What We Leave Behind
Create image

“It's no wonder we don't defend the land where we live. We don't live here. We live in television programs and movies and books and with celebrities and in heaven and by rules and laws and abstractions created by people far away and we live anywhere and everywhere except in our particular bodies on this particular land at this particular moment in these particular circumstances.”

PeopleBookMomentsBodyLawHeavenWonderLandTelevisionParticularCircumstancesProgramFar AwayAbstraction
Book:Endgame, Volume 2: Resistance
Create image

“Question four: What book would you give to every child? Answer: I wouldn't give them a book. Books are part of the problem: this strange belief that a tree has nothing to say until it is murdered, its flesh pulped, and then (human) people stain this flesh with words. I would take children outside and put them face to face with chipmunks, dragonflies, tadpoles, hummingbirds, stones, rivers, trees, crawdads. That said, if you're going to force me to give them a book, it would be The Wind In The Willows, which I hope would remind them to go outside.”

PeopleIfsGivingHumansChildrenSaidBookProblemWould BeFacesBeliefForceAnswersFourTreeStrangeWindBirdRiversStonesFleshFace To FaceStainsHummingbirdsDragonfliesWind In The WillowsTadpolesChipmunks
Author:Derrick Jensen
Create image