Top 31 Permaculture Quotes & Sayings

I probably lead a very spoiled life, because I travel from people interested in permaculture to people interested in permaculture. Some of them are tribal, and some of them are urban, and so on.

Traditional agriculture was labour intensive, industrial agriculture is energy intensive, and permaculture-designed systems are information and design intensive.

Anarchy would suggest you're not cooperating. Permaculture is urging complete cooperation between each other and every other thing, animate and inanimate.

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.

I’m going to argue here that the most accurate and least muddled way to think of permaculture is as a design approach, and that we are often misdirected by the fact that it fits into a larger philosophy and movement which it supports. But it is not that philosophy or movement. It is a design approach for realizing a new paradigm.

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

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

Permaculture offers a radical approach to food production and urban renewal, water, energy and pollution. It integrates ecology, landscape, organic gardening, architecture and agro-forestry in creating a rich and sustainable way of living. It uses appropriate technology giving high yields for low energy inputs, achieving a resource of great diversity and stability. The design principles are equally applicable to both urban and rural dwellers

Our goal is not to assume leadership of existing institutions, but rather to render them irrelevant. We don't want to take over the state or change its policies. We want to render its laws unenforceable. We don't want to take over corporations and make them more 'socially responsible.' We want to build a counter-economy of open-source information, neighborhood garage manufacturing, permaculture, encrypted currency and mutual banks, leaving the corporations to die on the vine along with the state. We do not hope to reform the existing order. We intend to serve as its grave-diggers.

I've become really interested in permaculture, simplifying my life and doing everything I can to develop more of a sustainable lifestyle.

Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable human environments...Permaculture uses the inherent qualities of plants and animals combined with the natural characteristics of landscapes and structures to produce a life supporting system for city and country, using the smallest practical area.

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.

You can't live like a Bushman or an Aborigine anymore, so they've got to rethink the whole basis of how they're going to live. Permaculture helps you do that easily.

Permaculture creates a cultivated ecology, which is designed to produce more human and animal food than is generally found in nature.

Permaculture is something with a million heads. It's a way of thinking which is already loose, and you can't put a way of thinking back in the box.

Permaculture is not the movement of sustainability and it is not the philosophy behind it; it is the problem-solving approach the movement and the philosophy can use to meet their goals and design a world in which human needs are met while enhancing the health of this miraculous planet that supports us.

I gave one permaculture course in Botswana, and now my students are out in the bloody desert in Namibia teaching Bushmen - whose language nobody can speak - to be very good permaculture people.

The end result of the adoption of permaculture strategies in any country or region will be to dramatically reduce the area of the agricultural environment needed by the households and the settlements of people, and to release much of the landscape for the sole use of wildlife and for re-occupation by endemic flora.

The first time I saw a review of one of my permaculture books was three years after I first started writing on it. The review started with, "Permaculture Two is a seditious book." And I said, "At last someone understands what permaculture's about."

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.

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.

Your own imagination as to the true ability of the permaculture design system, you need to trust the system and stick to main frame basics with profound and thorough thinking while trusting yourself.

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.

I want to create a permaculture society.

I am trying to get permaculture on to the national curriculum to teach children how to take care of their own health, rather than relying on businesses to feed them.

National Permaculture Day is a chance to share thoughts, visions and lots of common sense ways that we can all make a positive difference to the world we live in. Its all about combining age old truths and skills with new and innovative thinking and technologies….people, plants and landscapes growing together, designing and nurturing a healthy community along the way.

When the idea of permaculture came to me, it was like a shift in the brain, and suddenly I couldn't write it down fast enough.

Permaculture is an integrated, evolving system of perennial and self-perpetuating plants and animal species useful to man.

The permaculture's whole principle of having to work with nature, rather than fight against it, is not just an ethical restraint. It's also about realizing you're not the one in control. Nature is not only a nurturer but also a great destroyer.

Permaculture gives us a toolkit for moving from a culture of fear and scarcity to one of love and abundance

Permaculture challenges what we're doing and thinking - and to that extent it's sedition.