Quotessence
Home / Authors / Derrick Jensen
Derrick Jensen

Derrick Jensen Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsCultureCivilizationHumansWayDoePeopleWorldPlanetsThinkingMeanNeedsTreeWantBelieveEconomicGivingKnowsLongLying

Famous Derrick Jensen Quotes

“The pretense that humans are superior to nonhumans is entirely unsupportable. I have seen no compelling evidence that humans are particularly more "intelligent" than any other creature. I have had long and fruitful relationshis with many nonhuman animals, both domesticated and wild, and have reveled in the bouquet of radically different intelligences - different forms, not different "quantities" that they have introduced to me, each in his or her own time, in his or her own way.”

WayHumansLongDifferentFormAnimalCreaturesEvidenceIntelligentSuperiorsArroganceQuantityCompellingPretenseBouquets
Book:Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos
Create image

“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

“When dams were erected on the Columbia, salmon battered themselves against the concrete, trying to return home. I expect no less from us. We too must hurl ourselves against and through the literal and metaphorical concrete that contains and constrains us, that keeps us from talking about what is most important to us, that keeps us from living the way our bones know we can, that bars us from our home. It only takes one person to bring down a dam.”

KnowsWayTryingPersonsImportantHomeTalkingReturnBonesBarsConcreteLiteralColumbiaSalmonMetaphoricalDamsBatteredConstrain
Book:A Language Older Than Words
Create image