146 Quotes by Paul Hawken

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

The bottom line is down where it belongs – at the bottom.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken.

Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

You can blame people who knock things over in the dark or you can begin to light candles. You’re only at fault if you know about the problem and choose to do nothing.

Green business is not about tie-dyed T-shirts. It’s about transforming the industrial system itself into one that looks at all the connections.

While there may be no “right” way to value a forest or a river, there is a wrong way, which is to give it no value at all. How do we decide the value of a 700-year-old tree? We need only to ask how much it would cost to make a new one, or a new river, or even a new atmosphere.

If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t have the correct data. If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a heart.

When the planes still swoop down and aerial spray a field in order to kill a predator insect with pesticides, we are in the Dark Ages of commerce.