quotes

“Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it.”
– Leonardo Da Vinci


“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”
– Hans Hofmann

"The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof."
― Barbara Kingsolver


"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.


"Few things in the world are more powerful than a positive push. A smile. A world of optimism and hope. A 'you can do it' when things are tough."
- Richard M. DeVos

"Hunger is the best sauce in the world."
- Cervantes


"Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm."
- Ambrose Bierce


"More die in the United States of too much food than of too little."
- John Kenneth Galbraith


“When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everyone will respect you.”  ― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching





“To find yourself, think for yourself.”
― Socrates


“The proverb warns that, 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

"All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence." - Martin Luther King, Jr.


"So, I have just one wish for you - the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain your integrity, and where you do not feel forced by your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom." - Richard Feynman


"There is pleasure when a sore is scratched, but to be without sores is more pleasurable still. Just so, there are pleasures in worldly desires, but to be without desires is more pleasurable still."
- Nagarjuna


"Fear is the first natural enemy that must be overcome on the path to knowledge."

"No matter how frightening learning is, it is more terrible to think of a person without knowledge."

"Seek and see the marvels all around you."
- all from The Teachings of Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda


"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible." - Bertrand Russell

"Any idiot can be complicated. It takes a genius to be simple." - Pete Seeger


“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.” - Paulo Coelho


"Researchers estimate that 20% - 30% of Americans have voluntarily reduced their incomes and their consumption because of new personal priorities, and are happy with the change."


"Those who participate in voluntary simplicity question how modern society defines 'the good life' and advocate for less materialistic lifestyles."


"Voluntary simplicity involves limiting material consumption and seeking satisfaction through the noncommercial and non-material aspects of life."
- all from Complicated Simplicity, Sandlin/Walther, 2009


“To live fully, we must learn to use things and love people, and not love things and use people.”
― John Powell


“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.”
― Noam Chomsky


“Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence - those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you'd collapse. And while you people are over-consuming, the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster.”
― Aldous Huxley



"Come, behold this world, how it resembles an ornamented chariot, in which fools flounder, but for the wise there is no attachment to it." - Dhammapada


"If a man take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand." - Confucius


"Everything in life is speaking, is audible, is communicating, in spite of its apparent silence." - Hazrat Inayat Khan


“If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.” - Vicki Robin


“Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now?” - Chuck Palahniuk


"Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth."
- Eckhart Tolle


"You can't consume much if you sit still and read books." - Aldous Huxley


“Anyone who thinks consumption can expand forever on a finite planet is either insane or an economist.” – E.F. Schumacher


“For the majority of contemporary Americans, the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness centers on a relentless personal quest to acquire, consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors.” - Andrew Bacevich


"We're not running out of fossil fuels. We're running out of environment." -- Paul Ehrlich


"We may find that, while we're drastically cutting our energy consumption, we're actually raising our standard of living." -- David R. Brower


"We don’t know how to use energy or what to use it for. And we cannot restrain ourselves. Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy." -- Wendell Berry


"Material blessings, when they pay beyond the category of need, are weirdly fruitful of headache." ~ Philip Wylie


I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty. ~ George Santayana


“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” - Leonardo da Vinci


"We are like islands in the sea - separate on the surface, but connected in the deep." - William James


"The required success criteria for the twenty-first century are social cohesion, a respect for all of nature and the maintenance of the integrity of fundamental ecological systems." - Robert Theobald


“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” - Lao Tzu


"I thought of that while riding my bike." -Albert Einstein, on the theory of relativity


"When I go biking I am mentally far far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart." - Diane Ackerman


“The great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in this, that man and maid, freed of all false feelings and reluctance, will seek each other not as opposites, but as brother and sister, as neighbors, and will come together as human beings.” - Rainer Maria Rilke


“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.”
- Wendell Berry


“To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch the renewal of life - this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do” - Charles Dudley


"One should pay attention to even the smallest crawling creature for these too may have a valuable lesson to teach us." - Black Elk


"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies; for the hardest victory is victory over self." - Aristotle


"What does it take? It takes for us to tell ourselves the truth. It takes for us to tell ourselves the truth. That's what it takes. Not to lie to ourselves." - John Trudell


"Earth has limited resources, and we can't run a linear manufacturing process forever. The best way to be efficient is to reuse what we already have." - Self-Repair Manifesto


“A city is successful not when it’s rich but when its people are happy.” — Enrique Pealosa, Mayor, Bogotá, Colombia


“In recent years, psychologists studying measures of life satisfaction have largely confirmed the old adage that money can’t buy happiness—at least not for people who are already affluent.” - World Watch Institute


"In my experience, the more people have, the less likely they are to be contented. Indeed, there is abundant evidence that depression is a 'disease of affluence', a disorder of modern life in the industrialized world." - Andrew Weil


"Less is a possibility." - Douglas Coupland


"It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get." - Confucius


“By shifting our mind-set we can actually recognize the coming post-cheap oil era as an opportunity rather than a threat, and design the future low carbon age to be thriving, resilient and abundant.”
- P. Lipman