You get up and, first thing in the morning, you do your 500 words. Do it every day and you’ve got a book in eight or nine months.

- Vaclav Smil

A useful analogy is to see traditional societies as relying on instantaneous (or minimally delayed) and constantly replenished solar income, while mo…

- Vaclav Smil

...no matter how complex or affluent, human societies are nothing but subsystems of the biosphere, the Earth's thin veneer of life, which is ultimate…

- Vaclav Smil

Everyone [in higher education] was what I call drillers of deeper wells. These academics sit at the bottom of a deep well and they look up and see a …

- Vaclav Smil

Apple! Boy, what a story. No taxes paid, everything made abroad - yet everyone worships them. This new iPhone, there’s nothing new in it. Just a gold…

- Vaclav Smil

I've read about 80 books a year for the past 50 years. I come from cultural breeding. I don't have a cellphone. When you spend all your time checking…

- Vaclav Smil

Energy is the only universal currency: one of its many forms must be transformed to another in order for stars to shine, planets to rotate, plants to…

- Vaclav Smil