98 Quotes by Charles Eisenstein

When we must pay the true price for the depletion of nature’s gifts, materials will become more precious to us, and economic logic will reinforce, and not contradict, our heart’s desire to treat the world with reverence and, when we receive nature’s gifts, to use them well.

The situation on Earth today is too dire for us to act from habit—to reenact again and again the same kinds of solutions that brought us to our present extremity. Where does the wisdom to act in entirely new ways come from? It comes from nowhere, from the void; it comes from inaction. When we see it, we realize it was right in front of us all along. It is never far away; yet at the same time it is in a different universe—a different Story of the World.

We never were separate from nature and never will be, but the dominant culture on earth has long imagined itself to be apart from nature and destined one day to transcend it. We have lived in a mythology of separation.

One of the ways that your project, your personal healing, or your social invention can change the world is through story. But even if no one ever learns of it, even if it is invisible to every human on Earth, it will have no less of an effect.

When do you manipulate others for your own advantage? When I notice myself doing it, usually it is when I am feeling insecure.

How beautiful can life be? We hardly dare imagine it.

People tend to conceptualize problems in such a way as to validate the tools that are familiar and available to them. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If all you have are antibiotics, you will always look for the germ. If all you have is a mindset of war, then you will always look first for an enemy.

I would like to propose that the reason our actions have been so manifestly unsuccessful in steering the world away from its present collision course is that we have not, generally speaking, been basing them on any true understanding.

The power of attention is much greater than the force of self-restraint.