Favorite Quotes from Bill Mollison, Father of Permaculture, and Others

“To empower the powerless and ‘create a million villages’ to replace nation states is the only safe future for the preservation of the biosphere.” –Bill Mollison, PDM, Preface

“To accumulate wealth, power or land beyond one’s needs in a limited world is to be truly immoral, be it as an individual, an institution, or a nation-state.” –Bill Mollison, PDM, p. 1

“We know how to solve every food, clean energy and sensible shelter problem in every climate … the tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are designed or applied by those who hold power, and the reason for this is obvious and simple: to let people arrange their own food, energy and shelter is to lose economic and political control over them.” –Bill Mollison, Father of the Modern Permaculture Movement, PDM, p. 506

“I do not, in my lifetime, or that of my children’s children, foresee a world where there are no eroded soils, stripped forests, famine or poverty, but I do see a way in which we can spend our lives towards earth repair. If and when the whole world is secure, we have won a right to explore space, and the oceans. Until we have demonstrated that we can establish a productive and secure earth society, we do not belong anywhere else, nor (I suspect) would we be welcome elsewhere.” –Bill Mollison, PDM, p. 508

“The very concept of land ownership is ludicrous …” –Bill Mollison, PDM, p. 545

“Trees are responsible for 3/4 of all rains” –Bill Mollison, Father of the Permaculture Movement (Video #5)

“Few people muck around in earth, and when on international flights, I often find I have the only decently dirty fingernails.” –Bill Mollison, PDM

“Not only is the tree the great engine of production, but its present triumphant agricultural rivals, the grains, are really weaklings.”
–J. Russell Smith, one time professor at the Wharton School of Economics in “Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture” a permaculture classic, which until now I had only heard about from Permaculture leaders. Now I get to read it. It’s online and free! http://soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010175.tree%20crops.pdf

“Unfortunately, our Graeco-Roman western linear reductionist systematized fragmented disconnected parts-oriented individualized culture does not make these critters happy. And it considers anyone who reaches for such a goal to be a lunatic.” –Joel Salatin

Comments are closed.