146 Quotes by Paul Hawken

If there is to be an ecologically sound society, it will have to come the grass roots up, not from the top down.

First we need to decide what needs to be done. Then we do it. And then we ask if it is possible.

We are speeding up our lives and working harder in a futile attempt to buy the time to slow down and enjoy it.

Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity; it is a sacred act.

How is it that we have created an economic system that tells us it is cheaper to destroy the earth and exhaust its people than to nurture them both? Is it rational to have an pricing system which discounts the future and sells off the past? How did we create an economic system that confused capital liquidation with income?

The problems to be faced are vast and complex, but come down to this: 6.6 billion people are breeding exponentially. The process of fulfilling their wants and needs is stripping earth of its biotic capacity to produce life; a climactic burst of consumption by a single species is overwhelming the skies, earth, waters, and fauna.

Capitalism, as practiced, is a financially profitable, non-sustainable aberration in human development.

Sustainability is an economic state where the demands placed upon the environment by people and commerce can be met without reducing the capacity of the environment to provide for future generations. It can also be expressed in the simple terms of an economic golden rule for the restorative economy: Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, make amends if you do.

Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich