Best Permaculture Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 3

Source: Principles of a Permaculture Economy

“The best ones to solve the climate change problem are businesses all around the world. If each business adapts permaculture principles, we would see massive improvements in climate and natural ecosystem conditions.”

Business Climate Change Business Advice Permaculture Ecosystem Management

Author:Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Permaculture is not just about the elements of a system; it is also about the flows and connections among those elements. You can have solar power, an organic garden, an electric car, and a straw bale house and still not live in a permaculture. A project becomes a permaculture only when special attention is paid to the relationships between each element, among the functions of those elements, and among the people who work within the system.”

Relationships Connection Permaculture

Book:Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community

Source: Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community

“Permaculture stems from a triad of ecological ethics: First, care for the earth, because the earth sustains our lives. Second, care for the people, because we are people, and because people are the primary cause of damage to the earth. Third, recycle all resources toward the first two ethics, because surplus means pollution and renewal means survival. By allowing these three primary ethics to provide a foundation for our garden, design, and community work, we can move toward our goals of a peaceful culture and a healthy human ecology.”

Ethics Ecology Permaculture

Book:Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community

Source: Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community

“Our goal is not to assume leadership of existing institutions, but rather to render them irrelevant. We don't want to take over the state or change its policies. We want to render its laws unenforceable. We don't want to take over corporations and make them more 'socially responsible.' We want to build a counter-economy of open-source information, neighborhood garage manufacturing, permaculture, encrypted currency and mutual banks, leaving the corporations to die on the vine along with the state. We do not hope to reform the existing order. We intend to serve as its grave-diggers.”

“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.”

People Ends Country Use Results Environment Needed Areas Strategy Release Landscape Regions Occupation Sole Household Adoption Wildlife Settlement Permaculture End Results Flora

Author:Bill Mollison

“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.”

Two Problem Seems Moving Fall Air Paper Blue Illness Showers Complaints Toilets Traveller Tissues Permaculture Affluent

Author:Bill Mollison

“What is proposed herein is that we have no right, nor any ethical justification, for clearing land or using wilderness while we tread over lawns, create erosion, and use land inefficiently. Our responsibility is to put our house in order. Should we do so, there will never be any need to destroy wilderness.”

Needs Should Use Order House Responsibility Land Wilderness Ethical Justification Lawns Clearing Permaculture Erosion

Author:Bill Mollison

“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.”

“Few people today muck around in earth, and when on international flights, I often find I have the only decently dirty fingernails.”

People Today Earth International Flight Dirty Permaculture Fingernails

Author:Bill Mollison

“If and when the whole world is secure, we have won a right to explore space, and the oceans. Until we have demonstrated that we can establish a productive and secure earth society, we do not belong anywhere else, nor (I suspect) would we be welcome elsewhere.”

Ifs World Whole Earth Space Ocean Whole World Welcome Secure Productive Suspects Elsewhere Permaculture Ifs And

Author:Bill Mollison

“You don’t have a snail problem, you have a duck deficiency.”

Problem Ducks Deficiency Permaculture Snail

Author:Bill Mollison

“You can solve all the world's problems in a garden.”

World Problem Garden Solve Permaculture

Author:Geoff Lawton

“Your own imagination as to the true ability of the permaculture design system, you need to trust the system and stick to main frame basics with profound and thorough thinking while trusting yourself.”

Thinking Needs Imagination Ability Design Sticks Profound Thorough Basics Permaculture

Author:Geoff Lawton

“I'm certain I don't know what permaculture is. That's what I like about it - it's not dogmatic. But you've got to say it's about the only organized system of design that ever was. And that makes it extremely eerie.”

Knows Certain Design Organized Dogmatic Permaculture Eerie

Author:Bill Mollison

“I guess I would know more about permaculture than most people, and I can't define it. It's multi-dimensional - chaos theory was inevitably involved in it from the beginning.”

People Knows I Can Theory Involved Chaos Permaculture Chaos Theory

Author:Bill Mollison

“When the idea of permaculture came to me, it was like a shift in the brain, and suddenly I couldn't write it down fast enough.”

Writing Ideas Enough Brain Permaculture

Author:Bill Mollison

“I gave one permaculture course in Botswana, and now my students are out in the bloody desert in Namibia teaching Bushmen - whose language nobody can speak - to be very good permaculture people.”

People Courses Speak Language Teaching Students Very Good Desert Bloody Permaculture Bushmen Namibia

Author:Bill Mollison

“You can't live like a Bushman or an Aborigine anymore, so they've got to rethink the whole basis of how they're going to live. Permaculture helps you do that easily.”

Whole Helping Bases Permaculture Bushmen

Author:Bill Mollison

“I probably lead a very spoiled life, because I travel from people interested in permaculture to people interested in permaculture. Some of them are tribal, and some of them are urban, and so on.”

People Urban Spoiled Permaculture

Author:Bill Mollison

“The first time I saw a review of one of my permaculture books was three years after I first started writing on it. The review started with, "Permaculture Two is a seditious book." And I said, "At last someone understands what permaculture's about."”

Writing Years Firsts Said Two Book Lasts Three Saws First Time Reviews Three Years Permaculture

Author:Bill Mollison

“Permaculture challenges what we're doing and thinking - and to that extent it's sedition.”

Thinking Challenges Permaculture

Author:Bill Mollison

“The worst thing about permaculture is that it's extremely successful, but it has no center, and no hierarchy.”

Successful Worst Worst Things Hierarchy Permaculture

Author:Bill Mollison

“Permaculture is something with a million heads. It's a way of thinking which is already loose, and you can't put a way of thinking back in the box.”

Thinking Way Millions Boxes Way Of Thinking Permaculture

Author:Bill Mollison

“Anarchy would suggest you're not cooperating. Permaculture is urging complete cooperation between each other and every other thing, animate and inanimate.”

Cooperation Anarchy Permaculture Cooperating

Author:Bill Mollison

“Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.”

World Problem Simple Solutions Complexes Permaculture

Author:Bill Mollison

“The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.”

“Permaculture is not the movement of sustainability and it is not the philosophy behind it; it is the problem-solving approach the movement and the philosophy can use to meet their goals and design a world in which human needs are met while enhancing the health of this miraculous planet that supports us.”

World Needs Humans Philosophy Use Problem Goal Behinds Support Design Movement Planets Mets Approach Sustainability Problem Solving Miraculous Human Needs Permaculture

Author:Toby Hemenway

“Sitting at our back doorsteps, all we need to live a good life lies about us. Sun, wind, people, buildings, stones, sea, birds and plants surround us. Cooperation with all these things brings harmony, opposition to them brings disaster and chaos.”

People Needs Lying Sun Sea Building Wind Bird Sitting Stones Harmony Plant Chaos Disaster Opposition Surround Good Life Cooperation Permaculture Doorstep Sea Birds

Author:Bill Mollison

“Stupidity is an attempt to iron out all differences, and not to use them or value them creatively.”

Use Values Differences Stupidity Iron Permaculture

Author:Bill Mollison

“It’s a revolution. But it’s the sort of revolution that no one will notice. It might get a little shadier. Buildings might function better. You might have less money to earn because your food is all around you and you don’t have any energy costs. Giant amounts of money might be freed up in society so that we can provide for ourselves better. So it’s a revolution. But permaculture is anti-political. There is no room for politicians or administrators or priests. And there are no laws either. The only ethics we obey are: care of the earth, care of people, and reinvestment in those ends.”

People Littles Ends Might Care Earth Law Political Energy Rooms Building Revolution Amount Politician Cost Ethics Function Giants Priests Permaculture Administrators Anti Political

Author:Bill Mollison

“Permaculture is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order.”

“Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system”

Philosophy Animal Products Areas Labor Function Plant Observation Thoughtful Permaculture Plants And Animals

Book:Permaculture Two: Practical Design for Town and Country in Permanent Agriculture

Source: Permaculture Two: Practical Design for Town and Country in Permanent Agriculture

“The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.”

Children Decision Existence Responsibility Our Children Ethical Taking Responsibility Permaculture

Author:Bill Mollison

“Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable human environments...Permaculture uses the inherent qualities of plants and animals combined with the natural characteristics of landscapes and structures to produce a life supporting system for city and country, using the smallest practical area.”

“Permaculture creates a cultivated ecology, which is designed to produce more human and animal food than is generally found in nature.”

Humans Found Animal Produce Ecology Permaculture Humans And Animals Animal Food

Author:Bill Mollison

“Traditional agriculture was labour intensive, industrial agriculture is energy intensive, and permaculture-designed systems are information and design intensive.”

Energy Information Design Traditional Labour Agriculture Permaculture

Author:David Holmgren

“Consciously designed landscapes which mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, while yielding an abundance of food, fibre and energy for provision of local needs.”

Needs Found Energy Patterns Locals Landscape Abundance Provision Permaculture

Author:David Holmgren

“What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet. We don't know what details of a truly sustainable future are going to be like, but we need options, we need people experimenting in all kinds of ways and permaculturists are one of the critical gangs that are doing that.”

People Knows Way Needs Kind Important Groups Planets Activity Details Critical All Kinds Gang Permaculture

Author:David Suzuki

“National Permaculture Day is a chance to share thoughts, visions and lots of common sense ways that we can all make a positive difference to the world we live in. Its all about combining age old truths and skills with new and innovative thinking and technologies….people, plants and landscapes growing together, designing and nurturing a healthy community along the way.”

“What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet.”

Important Groups Planets Activity Permaculture

Author:David Suzuki

“Permaculture gives us a toolkit for moving from a culture of fear and scarcity to one of love and abundance”

Giving Moving Culture Abundance Scarcity Permaculture

Author:Toby Hemenway

“I’m going to argue here that the most accurate and least muddled way to think of permaculture is as a design approach, and that we are often misdirected by the fact that it fits into a larger philosophy and movement which it supports. But it is not that philosophy or movement. It is a design approach for realizing a new paradigm.”

Thinking Way Philosophy Facts Realizing Support Design Movement Fit Approach Arguing Accurate Paradigm Permaculture It Support

Author:Toby Hemenway

“I've become really interested in permaculture, simplifying my life and doing everything I can to develop more of a sustainable lifestyle.”

I Can Lifestyle Permaculture

Author:Ellen Page

“Permaculture is an integrated, evolving system of perennial and self-perpetuating plants and animal species useful to man.”

Men Self Animal Plant Species Evolve Integrated Permaculture Plants And Animals Perpetuating

Author:Bill Mollison

“Permaculture principles focus on thoughtful designs for small-scale intensive systems which are labor efficient and which use biological resources instead of fossil fuels. Designs stress ecological connections and closed energy and material loops. The core of permaculture is design and the working relationships and connections between all things.”

Use Energy Principles Focus Design Materials Resources Labor All Things Connections Stress Core Scales Thoughtful Fuel Efficient Fossils Fossil Fuel Ecological Loops Permaculture

Author:Bill Mollison

“Permaculture offers a radical approach to food production and urban renewal, water, energy and pollution. It integrates ecology, landscape, organic gardening, architecture and agro-forestry in creating a rich and sustainable way of living. It uses appropriate technology giving high yields for low energy inputs, achieving a resource of great diversity and stability. The design principles are equally applicable to both urban and rural dwellers”