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. I never listened to what they were saying - I watched what they were doing, which is really the exact opposite of the Freuds and Jungs and Adlers.

Bill Mollison

Categorized in : Night Animal Opposites

The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.

Bill Mollison

garden change food

Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.

Bill Mollison

problem simple world

The tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are designed or applied by those who hold power, and the reason for this is obvious and simple: to let people arrange their own food, energy and shelter is to lose economic and political control over them. We should cease to look to power structures, hierarchical systems, or governments to help us, and devise ways to help ourselves.

Bill Mollison

government simple reality

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. They 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 Mollison

water hands people

Permaculture is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order.

Bill Mollison

agriculture ecosystems order

It’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. You 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. 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

political law people

We're only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window and see our food growing and our friends working nearby.

Bill Mollison

kitchen growing looks

I teach self-reliance, the world's most subversive practice. I teach people how to grow their own food, which is shockingly subversive. So, yes, it’s seditious. But it’s peaceful sedition.

Bill Mollison

practice self people

Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system

Bill Mollison

thoughtful animal philosophy

The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.

Bill Mollison

decision responsibility children

Women are the holders of all knowledge, everything a man knows he stole from a woman.

Bill Mollison

knows men

We are sufficient to do everything possible to heal this Earth.

Bill Mollison

sufficient heal earth

Sitting at our back doorsteps, all we need to live a good life lies about us. Sun, wind, people, buildings, stones, sea, birds and plants surround us. Cooperation with all these things brings harmony, opposition to them brings disaster and chaos.

Bill Mollison

good-life wind lying

Permaculture principles focus on thoughtful designs for small-scale intensive systems which are labor efficient and which use biological resources instead of fossil fuels. Designs stress ecological connections and closed energy and material loops. The core of permaculture is design and the working relationships and connections between all things.

Bill Mollison

thoughtful stress focus

The worst thing about permaculture is that it's extremely successful, but it has no center, and no hierarchy.

Bill Mollison

permaculture hierarchy successful

We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities

Bill Mollison

insurmountable opportunity

Wealth is a deep understanding of the natural world.

Bill Mollison

wealth deep-understanding world

I can easily teach people to be gardeners, and from them, once they know how to garden, you'll get a philosopher.

Bill Mollison

philosopher garden people

You don’t have a snail problem, you have a duck deficiency.

Bill Mollison

permaculture ducks problem

Choose your friends from people who you like what they do - even though you mightn't like what they say.

Bill Mollison

people