171 Quotes by George Monbiot

So why is this happening? The answer is like the Ouroboros, the snake swallowing its own tail. When you have followed it all the way round you find yourself back where you started.

The Christians stole the winter solstice from the pagans, and capitalism stole it from the Christians.

The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci used the term ‘cultural hegemony’ to describe the way in which ideas and concepts which benefit a dominant class are universalized. They become norms, adopted whole and unexamined, which shape our thinking. Perhaps we suffer from agricultural hegemony: what is deemed to be good for farmers or landowners is deemed, without question or challenge, to be good for everyone.

So, if you don’t fit in, if you feel at odds with the world, if your identity is troubled and frayed, if you feel lost and ashamed – it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.

Development which has no regard for whom or what it harms is not development. It is the opposite of progress, damaging the Earth’s capacity to support us and the rest of its living systems.

When you warn people about the dangers of climate change, they call you a saint. When you explain what needs to be done to stop it, they call you a communist.

Why is it so easy to save the banks – but so hard to save the biosphere?

All the money, all the prestige in the world will never make up for the loss of your freedom.

Rewilding is not about abandoning civilization but about enhancing it. It is to ‘love not man the less, but Nature more’.