I teach self-reliance, the world's most subversive practice. I teach people how to grow their own food, which is shockingly subversive. So, yes, it’s….

Say you're working for a big overseas aid organization. You can't leave home in a Mercedes Benz, travel 80 kilometers to work in a great concrete str….

Wealth is a deep understanding of the natural world..

Permaculture is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of n….

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

You can't cooperate by knocking something about or bossing it or forcing it to do things..

If you get someone who looks after himself and those around him, that's a deep ecologist. He can talk philosophy that I understand. People like that ….

There is no more time-wasting process than that of believing people will act, and then finding that they will not..

You should never have gotten to the stage where you could see the last ancient forests! Just get out of there right now, because the lessons you need….

The extinction rate is so huge now, we're to the stage where we've got to set up recombinant ecologies. There are no longer enough species left, anyw….

Anything that's left that's remotely like wilderness should be left strictly alone. We have no business there any more. It's not going to save you to….

Why is it that we don't build human settlements that will feed themselves, and fuel themselves, and catch their own water, when any human settlement ….

I probably lead a very spoiled life, because I travel from people interested in permaculture to people interested in permaculture. Some of them are t….

We have to let nature put what's left together, and see what it can come up with to save our ass..

I think it's pointless asking questions like "Will humanity survive?" It's purely up to people - if they want to, they can, if they don't want to, th….

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

People question me coming through the American frontier these days. They ask, "What's your occupation?" I say, "I'm just a simple gardener." And that….

We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities.

A house should look after itself - as the weather heats up the house cools down, as the weather cools down the house heats up. It's simple stuff, you….

We are sufficient to do everything possible to heal this Earth..

Pollution is an unused resource..