“Globally the Greens have arisen like a spontaneous combustion, a reaction to the narrow-minded state-backed exploitation of resources and wealth for a few at the expense of the many.”

Anarchism may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished….. Nor does the Anarchistic scheme furnish any code of morals to be imposed upon the individual. “

We are all born bonded to nature; that’s why we put depictions of flowers and forests, rather than bulldozers or log piles, on our walls.

I will be Green until the day I die, if not for a long time after.

Humans are mentally sick with a disease called fear.

With a small fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the Iraq war, the US and Australia could ensure every starving, sunken-eyed child on the planet could be well fed, have clean water and sanitation and a local school to go to.

Australia must prioritise education spending. It is not a question of whether or not we have the money, it is a question of how we choose to spend it.

Years ago I resolved that because I had no ancestry myself I would leave a record of which my children would be proud, and which might encourage them to still higher effort

Never want something without expecting it

In the end, climate change is a math problem.

Whereas our common past, out of Africa, saw a global diaspora of humankind, our common future depends on a global coming together and consensus, resulting in a more equitable distribution of the Earth’s largesse.

In securing the future of the planet, we secure happiness for ourselves. One of the aims of the Greens is to turn around the tide of pessimism amongst the young people of the world.

I think I could have been quite difficult to fathom as a youngster, this kid who didn’t talk about himself very much.

Wilderness has become one of the world’s fastest disappearing resources, and it is non-renewable.

I am aware that one should always make room for renewal in politics. A democracy is the healthier for the turnover of the depth of talent there is in its community.

Yet unlike oil, gold or woodchips, it is essential to the wellbeing of humanity. We are made of it and fashioned by it…our psychological beings resonate with it.

We must have an expansionary vision, one that captures the imagination and diversity of the whole community, one which benefits a nation which has moved beyond the basics of literacy and numeracy and which wants to develop a learning culture.

I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.

The audience’s reactions are more important: if people believe in the love story, it’s because they love how we’ve acted. That’s the most beautiful award. It’s very important for me, people appreciating what I do.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

You can never predict how market will react. You can model it. You may try to predict it, but weather and markets and risk, only God knows because only he has seen tomorrow.

The life is worth living. It’s not true, what the tired and reactionary say. We’re not on this earth to suffer and die. We’re here to fulfill a mission.

You don’t need to predict the future. Just choose a future – a good future, a useful future – and make the kind of prediction that will alter human emotions and reactions in such a way that the future you predicted will be brought about.

Intentions and actions don’t always align…so before I react I try to remember that.

Our problems are not really the problem, but our reaction to it can be the actual problem.