“It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order.”

My students are constantly amazing me.

Don’t worry about being able to identify each of these plants (in your designs for clients). The world is full of botanists and horticulturists. All you have to do is design.

It still has these damn four things in it. Anything else is just unnecessary additions to make it smell good or color it blue when it goes down the toilet.

I believe humanity is a pretty interesting lot, and they’re all really busy doing and thinking interesting things.

The first time I saw a review of one of my permaculture books was three years after I first started writing on it. The review started with, “Permaculture Two is a seditious book.” And I said, “At last someone understands what permaculture’s about.”

There is no more time-wasting process than that of believing people will act, and then finding that they will not.

We’re only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window and see our food growing and our friends working nearby.

Another thing I find extremely eerie is that when people build a house, they almost exactly get it wrong. They don’t just get it partly wrong, they get it dead wrong.

People do things which I find quite amazing – things I would never have done and can’t understand very well.

The American lawn uses more resources than any other agricultural industry in the world. It uses more phosphates than India and puts on more poisons than any other form of agriculture.

You should never have gotten to the stage where you could see the last ancient forests! Just get out of there right now, because the lessons you need to learn are there. That’s the last place you’ll find those lessons readable.

If you only do one thing, collect rainwater.

They want to; we need to give them this last chance to create forests, soils, clean waters, clean energies, secure communities, stable regions, and to know how to do it from hands-on experience.

The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone.

We don’t have to suppose we need oil, or governments, or anything.

Type 1 Error: When we settle into wilderness, we are in conflict with so many life forms that we have to destroy them to exist. Keep out of the bush. It is already in good order.

It is not being out at heels that makes a man discontented, it is being out at heart. To be contented is to be good friends with yourself.

My friend comes over and says Hey, you moving? Nope. We just pack our stuff up once or twice a week to see how many boxes it takes. Here’s your sign.

It is better to decide a difference between enemies than friends, for one of our friends will certainly become an enemy and one of our enemies a friend.

I look at my yesterdays for months past, and find them as good a lot of yesterdays as anybody might want. I sit there in the firelight and see them all.

Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget. A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.

I couldn’t believe it the first time I heard one of my records on the radio, and I STILL love hearing anything I’m involved with on radio, and some of my best friends were from radio. But we were on different sides of that argument, there’s no question about that.

Either be a true friend or a mere stranger: a true friend will delight to do good–a mere stranger will do no harm.

I see it in my personal relationships with teammates, friends and mentors. And it’s a beautiful thing.