Permaculture by Quotes

What are some memorable/favorite quotes by permaculturalists (from well known to obscure/anonymous) that are profound or concise in explaining an aspect or the whole of the spirit of permaculture?

For my part, I am partial to "what less can I do?" from Fukuoka, but such can be rivaled and unseated/unseeded.

"When it is all said and done, and the coffin is in the ground, it is the farmer who is the richest man of all".

My Uncle in 1998

"Permaculture as a design system contains nothing new.  It arranges what was always there in a different way, so that it works to conserve energy or to generate more energy than it consumes.  What is novel, and often overlooked, is that any system of total common-sense design for human communities is revolutionary!"  Bill Mollison

"One certain result of using our skills to integrate food supply and settlement, to catch water from our roof areas, and to place nearby a zone of fuel forest which receives wastes and supplies energy, will be to free most of the area of the globe for the rehabilitation of natural systems.  These need never be looked upon as 'of use to people', except in the very broad sense of global health."  Bill Mollison

Tyler Ludens wrote:"Permaculture as a design system contains nothing new.  It arranges what was always there in a different way, so that it works to conserve energy or to generate more energy than it consumes.  What is novel, and often overlooked, is that any system of total common-sense design for human communities is revolutionary!"  Bill Mollison

Thanks Tyler, I like the first one particularly. I found another by Mollison just before: “Sun, wind, people, buildings, stones, sea, birds and plants surround us. Cooperation with all these things brings harmony, opposition to them brings disaster and chaos.”

You don't strike me as an idle dreamer.... perhaps an ideal dreamer, the best kind!

Learn, Live, Share.
This is my motto for how I live my life.
Try to LEARN something new that enriches how you LIVE, your life, and SHARE it so someone else can benefit from it.
It's like the Permies site really.

This might not be the best and I can't remember the woman's name that said it but I'll never forget it "How can I live in excess when others are in need"!

These are a couple of quotes by Bill Mollison that I like:  We’d had agriculture for 7,000 years, and we’d been losing for 7,000 years — everything was turning into desert. So I wondered, can we build systems that obey ecological principles? We know what they are, we just never apply them. Ecologists never apply good ecology to their gardens. Architects never understand the transmission of heat in buildings. And physicists live in houses with demented energy systems. It’s curious that we never apply what we know to how we actually live.  
Make the least changes that you need to achieve what you want.

Don’t cut a tree down unless you have to

Geoff Lawton says "We can solve all the world's problems in a garden."  I like it in part because you can look at it at so many different levels, from the peace we find for ourselves working in our gardens to the peace it could bring the world if people all over the world were feeling secure in their food supply because of their gardens.

"Where water runs, make it walk."  This one is just such an easy axiom for expressing a fundamental permaculture concept, not only in terms of how to manage water but it also applies to holding energy as long as possible in your system.  

If you dont have a pig, you have to be the pig

Sepp

Modern Agriculture was a lie when it came into being, it is still a lie and will always be a lie. Perpetuated for the sole purpose of creating a false need and to feed greed of companies.-- Wendell Berry

Our motive for protecting the soil is our certainty that it is fragile. It does not have the same unchanging character as a mountain or a river; it is a recent and ephemeral product. We owe it our lives and our energy, and the bodies we give it back are not payment enough.   - William Bryant Logan

What is Permaculture?
Permaculture is designing sustainably abundant societies as part of protecting and preserving water supply, agricultural land and the greater environment. The word is derived from Permanent Agriculture and Permanent Culture with the aim being to use practices that enable agriculture and culture to slowly improve and strengthen as time progresses

"Where water runs, make it walk."  This one is just such an easy axiom for expressing a fundamental permaculture concept, not only in terms of how to manage water but it also applies to holding energy as long as possible in your system.

Some great ones on this thread.  Here is one of my faves:


I teach self-reliance, the world's most subversive practice. I teach people how to grow their own food, which is shockingly subversive. So, yes, it’s seditious. But it’s peaceful sedition.
- Bill Mollison

Virtually everything we take for granted today is on an unsustainable trajectory. Isn’t it inevitable that anything unsustainable must end someday?  The time to build self-reliance and independence is now, everything that is currently taking place around us suggests that we have a small window of opportunity to build these alternative systems...

Despite all our achievements, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.

I myself LOVE this quote as I love growing things(medicinal plants & trees) and 'muck around in earth'.

"Few people today muck around in earth, and when on international flights, I often find I have the only decently dirty fingernails." ~ Bill Mollison

Hi Mark,

Welcome to Permies.

John F Dean wrote:Hi Mark,

Welcome to Permies.

Thanks John, been a member for a while. More a looker and learner & not participating much,
but was sayin' to myself how much I enjoy this great site, and that should change.

Like that Mark Twain quote btw! Hope your having a Blessed day.