Quotations
We are heading for a world with three billion cars and a permanently brown sky unless we establish global rules limiting every country to a safe and equal level of consumption.
There is a bomb ticking away under the whole world. We accidentally built it ourselves, out of too many people and too much consumption and too much pressure on the environment.
When we look at the future we have three basic choices: we can continue as we are at present, short sightedly guzzling finite resources in a crazy rush of consumerism; we can attempt to mollify some of the grosser aspects of consumerism, and try still to hang on to our present ‘living standard’; or we can change, willingly, profoundly and radically.
If we better studied and understood God’s creation, this would do a great deal to caution and direct us in our use of it. For how could we find the impudence to abuse the world if we were seeing the great Creator stare us in the face through each and every part of it?
After all of these centuries, we have to accept the fact that foreigners are people too, entitled to the same things that we have. The third world has to have more and we have to live with less.
All possessions are by nature unrighteous; when one possesses them for personal advantage and does not bring them into the common stock for those in need.
I think of the world and what’s going on. Because man’s gone through history with so much death, killing, stealing, I don’t think man can do it on his own. It’s obvious what’s going to happen on this earth unless man changes. I, for one, need something to grab on to, to hold on to.
A human being needs an extended family as much as he or she needs vitamins and essential minerals . . . But practically no Americans have extended families anymore, with the exception of the Bushes and the Navajos. When a husband and a wife fight, they think it’s about money or how to raise kids or whatever. But what they’re actually saying to each other is, ‘You are not enough people.’
In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.
Being different sexes makes no difference because there is no sex in the inner person where the substance of friendship lies.
This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century — solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.
Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most – that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least.
Were it not for the presence of the unwashed and the half-educated, the formless, queer and incomplete, the unreasonable and absurd, the infinite shapes of the delightful human tadpole, the horizon would not wear so wide a grin.
I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top.
Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you.
After all of these centuries, we have to accept the fact that foreigners are people too, entitled to the same things that we have. The third world has to have more and we have to live with less.
Human beings are not an all powerful life form that is going to destroy the planet, you know. We shouldn’t give ourselves airs. We’re simply another highly successful species that is fast approaching the point where the usual controls kick in. And the usual environmental controls, I’m afraid, are quite harsh. Mass die-offs are commonplace and extinctions are not unknown. What we need now is a new kind of human being who’s adapted to living in a global culture many billions strong. A global villager who can treat all the planet’s people as neighbours.
We are heading for a world with three billion cars and a permanently brown sky unless we establish global rules limiting every country to a safe and equal level of consumption.
There is a bomb ticking away under the whole world. We accidentally built it ourselves, out of too many people and too much consumption and too much pressure on the environment.
We are told truly that meekness and modesty are the rich and charming garments of the soul. The less showy our outward attire is, the more distinctly and brilliantly does the beauty of these inner garments shine.
Man is supposed to be an intelligent species, yet we keep polluting. We seem to want to wipe ourselves right off the earth, and no one is doing anything about it. That bothers me. Everyone seems to have given up hope on trying. I haven’t. It isn’t easy and it isn’t supposed to be, but I’m accomplishing something. How many people give up a lot to do something good? I’m sure we would have found a cure for cancer twenty years ago if we had really tried.
In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
What makes injustice so unacceptable in our time is the fact that we now possess the know-how to feed the world and provide basics for all its citizens. What is lacking is the will and the way. What is lacking is compassion.
If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.
We need to incorporate within our own lives the revolution we seek. We need not only a theory of a liberated society, but the practice of it. We need the experience of living a new reality. Instead of talking about abstract ideals, we need to live a new life. The time has come for a change and it must begin with me.
The radical will not work through the power structure in order to take it over. Neither will he wait until the establishment is ready to accept his ideas, for he may very well spend his whole life waiting as so many have done. He begins to act now on the vision. He is building a new society which will replace the old.
Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
When we look at the future we have three basic choices: we can continue as we are at present, short sightedly guzzling finite resources in a crazy rush of consumerism; we can attempt to mollify some of the grosser aspects of consumerism, and try still to hang on to our present ‘living standard’; or we can change, willingly, profoundly and radically.
