If you're a simple person today, and want to live simply, that is awfully seditious. And to advise people to live simply is more seditious still. Bill Mollison More Quotes by Bill Mollison More Quotes From Bill Mollison I think mine is a very rich life. Bill Mollison rich-life rich thinking When 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 Mollison car vegetables enemy There are a few societies that show signs of having been very rational about the physics of construction and the physics of real life. Some of the old middle-Eastern societies had downdraft systems over whole cities, and passive, rapid-evaporation ice-making systems. They were rational people using good physical principles to make themselves comfortable without additional sources of energy. Bill Mollison ice real cities A house should look after itself - as the weather heats up the house cools down, as the weather cools down the house heats up. It's simple stuff, you know? We've known how to do it for a long time. Bill Mollison simple weather long That we don't design agriculture to be sustainable is totally eerie. We design it to be a disaster, and of course, we get a disaster. Bill Mollison agriculture design eerie 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 wish want thinking I guess I would know more about permaculture than most people, and I can't define it. It's multi-dimensional - chaos theory was inevitably involved in it from the beginning. Bill Mollison chaos theory people 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 Anything that's any good is self-perpetuating. Bill Mollison perpetuating self People do things which I find quite amazing - things I would never have done and can't understand very well. Bill Mollison wells done people My students are constantly amazing me. Bill Mollison students Instead of physicists teaching physics, physicists should go home and see what physics applies to their home. Bill Mollison physics teaching home I think Americans are so poor it's pitiful, because you don't understand the natural world at all. Bill Mollison natural world thinking I could never teach people to be philosophers - and if I did, you could never make a gardener out of them. Bill Mollison philosopher teach people I'm certain I don't know what permaculture is. That's what I like about it - it's not dogmatic. But you've got to say it's about the only organized system of design that ever was. And that makes it extremely eerie. Bill Mollison permaculture design eerie Another 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 Mollison eerie house people Anarchy would suggest you're not cooperating. Permaculture is urging complete cooperation between each other and every other thing, animate and inanimate. Bill Mollison permaculture cooperation anarchy 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 wind water One of the great rules of design is do something basic right. Then everything gets much more right of itself. But if you do something basic wrong - if you make what I call a Type 1 Error - you can get nothing else right. Bill Mollison type design errors We don't have to suppose we need oil, or governments, or anything. Bill Mollison oil government needs
