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There is one, and only one solution, and we have almost no time to try it. We must turn all our resources to repairing the natural world, and train all our young people to help.

Bill Mollison

I’d come into town from the bush – after 28 years of field work in natural systems – and become an academic. So I turned my attention to humans, much as I had to possums in the forests.
BILL MOLLISON

Fields Forests Years
I think mine is a very rich life.
BILL MOLLISON

Life Mine Rich Thinking
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
I probably lead a very spoiled life, because I travel from people interested in permaculture to people interested in permaculture. Some of them are tribal, and some of them are urban, and so on.
BILL MOLLISON

People Spoiled Urban
It 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 MOLLISON

Dwells Principle Resources Urban Use
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
I think it’s pointless asking questions like “Will humanity survive?” It’s purely up to people – if they want to, they can, if they don’t want to, they won’t.
BILL MOLLISON

Asking People Questions Thinking
I think Americans are so poor it’s pitiful, because you don’t understand the natural world at all.
BILL MOLLISON

Natural Thinking World
The worst thing about permaculture is that it’s extremely successful, but it has no center, and no hierarchy.
BILL MOLLISON

Hierarchy Permaculture Successful
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
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
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
Humans were my study animal now – I set up night watches on them, and I made phonograms of the noises they make. I studied their cries, and their contact calls, and their alarm signals.
BILL MOLLISON

Animal Night Opposite
A really failing society has a lot of rules (or laws).
BILL MOLLISON

Failing Law People Really
A lending library enables people to help themselves to information; a locked-up book collection is useful only to the person who owns it.
BILL MOLLISON

Book Collection Information Own Person
I can easily teach people to be gardeners, and from them, once they know how to garden, you’ll get a philosopher.
BILL MOLLISON

Garden People Philosopher

There is one, and only one solution, and we have almost no time to try it. We must turn all our resources to repairing the natural world, and train all our young people to help.

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There is one, and only one solution, and we have almost no time to try it. We must turn all our resources to repairing the natural world, and train all our young people to help.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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