"We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." — Albert Einstein
"To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another." — John Burroughs
"'There is no such thing as sustainability. The best we can do is cause the least amount of harm.' Instead of 'sustainable,' he prefers the term 'responsible,' which, he argues, starts with companies treating nature not as a resource to be exploited but as a unique, life-giving entity on which we all—not least business—depend." — Yvon Chouinard The Guardian, "Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard: Denying Climate Change is Evil"
"If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war…Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy." — Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451
"We are led to believe we can have it if we try hard enough or spend enough, whatever "it" is. We are encouraged to believe that we can be free, but free of what? And through the influence of a common turn of modern political thought, many of us have come to believe if we don't get "it," no one is to blame but ourselves." — Nick Bullock Alpinist Magazine, Issue 68, "Less Rich Without You"
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." — Edward Abbey The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West
"The three policy pillars of this new era are familiar to us all: privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and lower corporate taxation, paid for with cuts to public spending." — Naomi Kline This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
"The writing has been on the wall for some years now, but we are a nation illiterate in the language of the wall. The writing just gets bigger. Something will eventually bring down the charming, infuriating naïveté of Americans that allows us our blithe consumption and cheerful ignorance of the secret ugliness that bring us whatever we want. … Nostalgia for an earlier ignorance is not the domain of this discussion." — Barbara Kingsolver Small Wonder
"One thing more dangerous than getting between a grizzly sow and her cub is getting between a businessman and a dollar bill." — Edward Abbey A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
"Clearly, what gets declared a crisis is an expression of power and priorities as much as hard facts. But we need not be spectators in all this: politicians aren’t the only ones with the power to declare a crisis. Mass movements of regular people can declare one too." — Naomi Kline This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
"I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a ‘surly, ill-mannered, bad-tempered fellow’. Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of fact, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, it then becomes an honor to be labeled curmudgeon." — Edward Abbey A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
"Politicians are like weather vanes. Our job is to make the wind blow." — David Brower
"I don’t hate white people; I hate the system of white supremacy that gives them asymmetrical power and unmerited privilege. I don’t hate cops; I hate the pattern of police brutality that systematically harasses and kills black people and other people of color with impunity. I don’t hate soldiers; I hate the horror of war that terrorizes the most politically and economically vulnerable among us. I don’t hate rich people; I hate the system of capitalism that creates an elite one percent at the expense of the rest of us. It is precisely because of my love for humanity that I get enraged at systems that prevent people from flourishing and being free. It’s frustrating to see my righteous anger at unjust systems interpreted as hatred for individuals, but it’s more frustrating to see the oppressed suffer while those maladjusted to injustice remain silent. I won’t be silent. Silence is violence." — Nyle Fort
"To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism. The conjoined twins are two sides of the same destructive body." — Ibram Kendi How to Be an Antiracist
