“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.”

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.

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 have seen such an immense change from the total repression and criminality of homosexuality in my lifetime. It does make me much more buoyant and optimistic about the future. If that change can occur in that time there’s hope for many other changes.

The thing about being catapulted into a whole new life–or at least, shoved up so hard against someone else’s life that you might as well have your face pressed against their window.

Grieving, like being blind, is a strange business; you have to learn how to do it. We seek company in mourning, but after the early bursts of tears, after the praises have been spoken, and the good days remembered, and the lament cried, and the grave closed, there is no company in grief. It is a burden borne alone.

Cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all.

To achieve style, begin by affecting none.

For me, being with Obama or having dinner with Bill Clinton… it’s crazy. It’s mind-blowing, because where I come from is just another world. We were just ignored by politicians – by America in general.

Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.