Wealth is a deep understanding of the natural world.
BILL MOLLISONWealth is a deep understanding of the natural world.
BILL MOLLISONYou can hit a nail on the head, or cause a machine to do so, and get a fairly predictable result. Hit a dog on the head, and it will either dodge, bite back, or die, but it will never again react in the same way.
BILL MOLLISONWe are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities
BILL MOLLISONWomen are the holders of all knowledge, everything a man knows he stole from a woman.
BILL MOLLISONThe 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.”
BILL MOLLISONIt is, as any traveller can confirm, a complaint best developed in the affluent North American, and it seems to be part of blue toilet dyes, air fresheners, lots of paper tissues, and two showers a day.
BILL MOLLISONPermaculture is an integrated, evolving system of perennial and self-perpetuating plants and animal species useful to man.
BILL MOLLISONThey 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.
BILL MOLLISONWhen you get deep ecologists who are philosophers, and they drive cars and take newspapers and don’t grow their own vegetables, in fact they’re not deep ecologists – they’re my enemies.
BILL MOLLISONYou might have less money to earn because your food is all around you and you don’t have any energy costs. Giant amounts of money might be freed up in society so that we can provide for ourselves better. So it’s a revolution. But permaculture is anti-political.
BILL MOLLISONThere is no more time-wasting process than that of believing people will act, and then finding that they will not.
BILL MOLLISONAnother 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.
BILL MOLLISONTo create a mess in which we perish by our own inaction makes nonsense of our claim to consciousness and morality
BILL MOLLISONIt uses appropriate technology giving high yields for low energy inputs, achieving a resource of great diversity and stability. The design principles are equally applicable to both urban and rural dwellers
BILL MOLLISONOpen pans of maple sugar can have the surface ice removed regularly (each day) until a sugar concentrate remains. Salts in water, and alcohol in ferment liquors can be concentrated in the same way.
BILL MOLLISONIt’s a revolution. But it’s the sort of revolution that no one will notice. It might get a little shadier. Buildings might function better.
BILL MOLLISON