Derrick Jensen quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Derrick Jensen

Derrick Jensen Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Derrick Jensen on Wise Famous Quotes.

A real partnership in which all parties help all others to be more fully themselves

Our lawns manifest our cultural desire: they are static, they are artificial, and they are kept sexually immature.

I think a lot of us are increasingly recognizing that the dominant culture is killing the planet.

We have a need for enchantment that is as deep and devoted as our need for food and water.

...a woman smart and persistent enough that even a PhD in psychology hasn't clouded her insight into how people think and act.

We cannot hope to create a sustainable culture with any but sustainable souls.

We must learn how to think like the planet.

If we wish to stop the atrocities, we need merely to step away from the isolation. There is a whole world waiting for us, ready to welcome us home.

Forests precede us and deserts dog our heels.

I am only so beautiful as the character of my relationships, only so rich as I enrich those around me, only so alive as I enliven those I greet.

Like the layers of an onion, under the first lie is another, and under that another, and they all make you cry.

I thought a forest was made up entirely of trees, but now I know that the foundation lies below ground, in the fungi.

Learning has to come from doing, not intellectualizing.

A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of green paper.

When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to "hope" at all. We simply do the work.

Civilization can never be sustainable.

The only real job of a teacher, especially a writing teacher, is to help students find themselves.

If you only had a limited time to life (which is of course the case), how would you spend your time?

The global industrial economy is the engine for massive environmental degradation and massive human (and nonhuman) impoverishment.

A system of domination will always be undernourished.

If the world is presented as resources to be exploited, then, more than likely, you're going to exploit the world.

I'm frightened of the intellectualism that can insulate us from action and turn the problems and solutions into puzzles or fantasies.

If your homeland were invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?

To believe Christianity stands in opposition to slavery is at best to think anachronistically and at worst to not understand Christianity.

A language Older Than Words

In order to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves.

I think it's very important for us to start to build a culture of resistance, because what we're doing isn't working, clearly.

White [...] "Indian wannabees" or as those who mine indiginous traditions the way multinationals mine their land.

Within this culture wealth is measured by one's ability to consume and destroy.

All writers are propagandists.

From the beginning, this culture - civilization - has been a culture of occupation.

As is true for most people I know, I've always loved learning. As is also true for most people I know, I always hated school. Why is that?

If your community is founded on an injustice, that injustice cannot be questioned.

The stories we are told shape the way we see the world, which shapes the way we experience the world.

A friend asked, "If increased awareness means less happiness, why bother?" No answer.

In sum, one of the primary things I learned was how to kill time. I learned also to wish away my life. I learned to give myself away.

Every morning when I awake I ask myself whether I should write or blow up a dam. I tell myself I should keep writing, though I'm not sure that's right

There is always money to kill people. There is never enough money for life affirming ends.

Love does not imply pacifism.

Civilization is not and can never be sustainable.

I had broken the most basic commandment of our culture: Thou shalt pretend there is nothing wrong.

Maud Gonne was - excuse me, Maud Gonne was central to the Gaelic literature revival. She wrote plays, and she sang.

Writing is really very easy. Tap a vein and bleed onto the page. Everything else is just technical.

Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.

We have been too kind to those who are killing the planet. We have been inexcusably, unforgivably, insanely kind.