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I think we probably have a racial death wish. We don’t understand anything about where we live, and we don’t want to.

Bill Mollison

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

Believe People Time Wasting
If you let people loose in a landscape and tell them to choose a house site, half of them will go sit on the ridges where they’ll die in the next fire, or where you can’t get water to them. Or they’ll sit in all the dam sites. Or they’ll sit in all the places that will perish in the next big wind.
BILL MOLLISON

Fire Water Wind
If you only do one thing, collect rainwater.
BILL MOLLISON

One Rainwater Thing
We should cease to look to power structures, hierarchical systems, or governments to help us, and devise ways to help ourselves.
BILL MOLLISON

Governments Help Hirerachical Ourselves
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.
BILL MOLLISON

Lasts Lessons Needs
We should not lend our talents to creating such spectacular catastrophes.
BILL MOLLISON

Catastrophes Spectacular Talent
You can’t cooperate by knocking something about or bossing it or forcing it to do things.
BILL MOLLISON

Boeing Knocking Something
I think we probably have a racial death wish. We don’t understand anything about where we live, and we don’t want to.
BILL MOLLISON

Thinking Want Wish
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.
BILL MOLLISON

Agriculture Country Poison
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.
BILL MOLLISON

Conflict Errors Order
The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.
BILL MOLLISON

Children Decision Responsibility
There are only four things in all cleaners – whether it’s shampoo, laundry detergent, whatever.You buy them in bulk and you mix them up properly, and they all work. It doesn’t matter if they call the stuff ecologically friendly or have dolphins diving around on the label.
BILL MOLLISON

Blue Color Detergent Label Smell Toilet
Most biologists, (says Vogel, 1981) seem to have heard of the boundary layer, but they have a fuzzy notion that it is a discrete region, rather than the discrete notion that it is a fuzzy region.
BILL MOLLISON

Boundaries Fuzzy Layers
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

Ocean Right Space
Permaculture challenges what we’re doing and thinking – and to that extent it’s sedition.
BILL MOLLISON

Challenges Permaculture Thinking
At least half of every city is wrong. From latitude 30 degrees to latitude 60, say, you’ve got to have the long axis of the house facing the sun. If the land is cut up into squares, that makes half of all houses wrong if they face the road.
BILL MOLLISON

Country Cutting Square
I’m certain I don’t know what permaculture is. That’s what I like about it – it’s not dogmatic. But you’ve got to say it’s about the only organized system of design that ever was. And that makes it extremely eerie.
BILL MOLLISON

Design Eerie Permaculture
Permaculture is something with a million heads. It’s a way of thinking which is already loose, and you can’t put a way of thinking back in the box.
BILL MOLLISON

Boxes Thinking Way
Anything that’s left that’s remotely like wilderness should be left strictly alone. We have no business there any more. It’s not going to save you to go in and cut the last old-stand forests.
BILL MOLLISON

Cutting Forests Lasts
If we lose the forests, we lose our only teachers.
BILL MOLLISON

Forests Lose Teacher
If you get someone who looks after himself and those around him, that’s a deep ecologist. He can talk philosophy that I understand.
BILL MOLLISON

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

Done People Understand Wells
Trees are responsible for 3/4 of all rains
BILL MOLLISON

Rain Responsible Tree
There is no room for politicians or administrators or priests. And there are no laws either. The only ethics we obey are: care of the earth, care of people, and reinvestment in those ends.
BILL MOLLISON

Ends Ethics Investment Law Obey
I believe humanity is a pretty interesting lot, and they’re all really busy doing and thinking interesting things.
BILL MOLLISON

Believe Interesting Thinking
Pollution is an unused resource.
BILL MOLLISON

Pollution Resources Unused
We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities
BILL MOLLISON

Insurmountable Opportunity

I think we probably have a racial death wish. We don’t understand anything about where we live, and we don’t want to.

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I think we probably have a racial death wish. We don’t understand anything about where we live, and we don’t want to.

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