We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.
Paul HawkenRead
We are losing our living systems, social systems, cultural systems, governing systems, stability, and our constitutional health, and we're surrendering it all at the same time.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the concurrent decline of vital systems in society and calls attention to the need for awareness and action.
Paul Hawken stresses that we are witnessing a significant deterioration of various systems that are essential for a thriving society, including ecological, social, and political structures. This decline is alarming as it is happening simultaneously across multiple domains, suggesting an urgent need for collective action and responsibility to prevent further loss and restore balance to our world.
Themes
LossSystemsEnvironmentSocietyActionHealthStability
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about environmental policy, one might say, 'As Paul Hawken stated, we are losing our living systems, urging us to take immediate action.'
More from Paul Hawken
All quotes βInspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider.
Paul HawkenRead
We can no longer prosper by increasing human productivity. The more we try to do, the more poverty we will create.
Paul HawkenRead
At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product.
Paul HawkenRead
How much harm does a company have to do before we question its right to exist?
Paul HawkenRead
We have the capacity to create a remarkably different economy: one that can restore ecosystems and protect the environment while bringing forth innovation, prosperity, meaningful work, and true security.
Paul HawkenRead
Similar quotes
Women have been trained to speak softly and carry a lipstick. Those days are over.
Bella AbzugRead
It is true that when there's a drone attack, those - that the - the terrorists are killed, it's true. But 500 and 5,000 more people rises against it, and more terrorism occurs, and more - more bomb blasts occurs.
Malala YousafzaiRead
Left unchecked, climate change risks not only making the poorest poorer, but pulling the emerging middle classes back into poverty, too.
Paul PolmanRead
That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred ans sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thence forward, and forever free.
Abraham LincolnRead
It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to arrange, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes. The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new. Their support is lukewarm ... partly because men are generally incredulous, never really trusting new things unless they have tested them by experience.
Niccolo MachiavelliRead
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.... Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less
Susan B. AnthonyRead