Conspicuous consumption Quote by Bill Mollison

““. . . every society that grows extensive lawns could produce all its food on the same area, using the same resources, and . . . world famine could be totally relieved if we devoted the same resources of lawn culture to food culture in poor areas. These facts are before us. Thus, we can look at lawns, like double garages and large guard dogs, [and Humvees and SUVs] as a badge of willful waste, conspicuous consumption, and lack of care for the earth or its people. Most lawns are purely cosmetic in function. Thus, affluent societies have, all unnoticed, developed an agriculture which produces a polluted waste product, in the presence of famine and erosion elsewhere, and the threat of water shortages at home.””

Bill Mollison

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 3.2 out of 5 (3 ratings)

Conspicuous consumption Food culture Water Short

More by Bill Mollison

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…

Bill Mollison

Women spend the money of society on its goods.

Bill Mollison

Image

Wealth is a deep understanding of the natural world.

Bill Mollison

Image

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…

Bill Mollison

Image

Why is it that we don't build human settlements that will feed themselves, and fuel themselves, and catch their own water, when any human…

Bill Mollison

Image

Anything that's left that's remotely like wilderness should be left strictly alone. We have no business there any more. It's not going to save…

Bill Mollison

Image

The important thing is not to do any agriculture whatsoever, and particularly to make the modern agricultural sciences a forbidden area - they're worse…

Bill Mollison

Image

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…

Bill Mollison

We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities

Bill Mollison

Image

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

Bill Mollison

Image

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

Bill Mollison

Image

If you get someone who looks after himself and those around him, that's a deep ecologist. He can talk philosophy that I understand. People…

Bill Mollison

Image

Explore all 114 Bill Mollison quotes

More Conspicuous consumption quotes

“CEO Gil Amelio stumbled. Ellison may have been baffled when Jobs insisted that he was not motivated by money, but it was partly true. He had neither Ellison’s conspicuous consumption needs nor Gates’s philanthropic impulses nor the competitive urge to see how high on the Forbes list he could get. Instead his ego needs and personal drives led him to…

Walter Isaacson

“One difference is that individuals living in multilingual communities seem to settle on an optimal cognitive load. The hyperpolyglot possesses a similar patchwork of linguistic proficiencies. Yet he or she exceeds this optimum with a conspicuous consumption of brain power (...) For multilinguals, learning languages is an act of joining society. There's no motive, no separable 'will to plasticity' that's…

Michael Erard

Unrestrained automobility, hedonism, individualism, and conspicuous consumption cannot be sustained because they take more than they give back. A spiritually impoverished world cannot be sustained because meaninglessness, anomie, and despair will corrode the desire to be sustained and the belief that humanity is worth sustaining. But these are the very things that distinguish the modern age from its predecessors, Genuine…

David W. Orr

I don't think we're crumbling as a civilization, but this is not our finest hour, and it's good to be mindful that we're all…

Mel Gibson

Image

. We must balance conspicuous consumption with conscious capitalism.

Kevin Kruse

Image

the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners

Barbara Kingsolver

Image

I write for one and only one purpose, to overcome the invincible ignorance of the traduced heart. […] I wish to speak to and…

Kenneth Rexroth

Image

“The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this generation requires to-day. The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the…

Henry David Thoreau

Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.

Thorstein Veblen

Image

“Now that everyone can afford status items like designer jeans, conspicuous consumption gives way to conspicuous exertion. Sheer exhilarating length becomes a value in itself. And the triathlon comes to represent, to quote a winner of the Hawaiian Ironman race, "the ultimate expression of the Southern California life-style." Which is why, outside a cluster of easeful lands, the recreational ordeal…

Charles Krauthammer

“. . . every society that grows extensive lawns could produce all its food on the same area, using the same resources, and . . . world famine could be totally relieved if we devoted the same resources of lawn culture to food culture in poor areas. These facts are before us. Thus, we can look at lawns, like double…

Bill Mollison

“When we crumble under the exorbitant weight of conspicuous commodities and the material pressure in a universe of illusion, life may become disheveled and…

Erik Pevernagie

Image

Browse all 33 Conspicuous consumption quotes

Conspicuous consumption Quote by Bill Mollison

Related quotes

More by Bill Mollison

More Conspicuous consumption quotes