79+ Paul Hawken Quotes On Technology, Education And Culture

Paul Hawken was an American environmentalist, entrepreneur, and author. He was a leading figure in the environmental movement and wrote several books on the subject of sustainability and natural resources. His most famous book was The Ecology of Commerce, which outlined a new vision for corporate responsibility and environmental sustainability. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Paul Hawken on leadership, technology, education.

Top 10 Paul Hawken Quotes

1. Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.
2. Most floods are caused by man, not weather; deforestation, levee construction, erosion, and overgrazing all result in the loss of ecosystem services.
3. All is connected ... no one thing can change by itself.
4. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.
5. Business is the only mechanism on the planet today powerful enough to produce the changes necessary to reverse global environments and social degradation.
6. The future belongs to those who understand that doing more with less is compassionate, prosperous, and enduring, and thus more intelligent, even competitive.
7. Always leave enough time in your life to do something that makes you happy, satisfied, even joyous. That has more of an effect on economic well-being than any other single factor.
8. The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them
9. The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck.
10. Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity; it is a sacred act.

Paul Hawken Short Quotes

• The bottom line is down where it belongs - at the bottom.
• Being a good human being is good business.
• A local company has more accountability.
• What we are missing, utterly and completely, in this government is accountability.
• Wrong is an addictive, repetitive story; Right is where the movement is.
• It costs the same to send a person to prison or to Harvard. The difference is the curriculum.
• As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth.
• If everyone thinks you have a good idea, you´re too late
• In short, industrialism is over.
• What we already know frames what we see, and what we see frames what we understand.

Paul Hawken Quotes About Sustainability

his planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. — Paul Hawken

We have an economy that tells us it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet. — Paul Hawken

Capitalism, as practiced, is a financially profitable, non-sustainable aberration in human development. — Paul Hawken

Paul Hawken Quotes About Making

Intelligent policies will be largely self-regulating in the sense that the system of incentives and standards makes it absolutely ludicrous to not move towards clean, internalized systems of cost and production. — Paul Hawken

Natural capitalism is not about making sudden changes, uprooting institutions, or fomenting upheaval for a new social order. Natural capitalism is about making small, critical choices that can tip economic and social factors in positive ways. — Paul Hawken

While there may be no "right" way to value a forest or a river, there is a wrong way, which is to give it no value at all. How do we decide the value of a 700-year-old tree? We need only to ask how much it would cost to make a new one, or a new river, or even a new atmosphere. — Paul Hawken

Being in business is not about making money. It is a way to become who you are. — Paul Hawken

Only caring individuals can restore the places we inhabit. The 'simple act of planting a tree' not only restores the places we live, but makes us whole and powerful again. — Paul Hawken

Paul Hawken Quotes About Problems

I think an old style of addressing environmental problems is ebbing, but the rise of the so-called conservative, political movement in this country is not a trend towards the future but a reaction to this very broad shift that we are undergoing. — Paul Hawken

You can blame people who knock things over in the dark or you can begin to light candles. You're only at fault if you know about the problem and choose to do nothing. — Paul Hawken

If they [companies] believe they are in business to serve people, to help solve problems, to use and employ the ingenuity of their workers to improve the lives of people around them by learning from the nature that gives us life, we have a chance. — Paul Hawken

Paul Hawken Quotes About Work

I'd rather fail at something important than succeed at something trivial. — Paul Hawken

We are the only species on this planet without full employment. — Paul Hawken

Luck is earned. Luck is working so hard at your craft, service or enterprise that sooner or later you get a break. — Paul Hawken

We are speeding up our lives and working harder in a futile attempt to buy the time to slow down and enjoy it. — Paul Hawken

Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich. — Paul Hawken

Paul Hawken Famous Quotes And Sayings

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night, and we watch television. — Paul Hawken

People are naming it the Third Wave, the Information Age, etc. but I would say those are basically technological descriptions, and this next shift is not about technology - although obviously it will be influenced and in some cases expressed by technologies. — Paul Hawken

That appropriation of resources and the transformation of them into goods and services through the European production system characterized, and characterizes to this day, all industrial systems including the information age. — Paul Hawken

We need to revise our economic thinking to give full value to our natural resources. This revised economics will stabilize both the theory and the practice of free-market capitalism. It will provide business and public policy with a powerful new tool for economic development, profitability, and the promotion of the public good. — Paul Hawken

We subsidize the disposal of waste in all its myriad forms — from landfills, to Superfund cleanups, to deep-well injection, to storage of nuclear waste. In the process, we encourage an economy where 80 percent of what we consume gets thrown away after one use. — Paul Hawken

The promise of business is to increase the general well-being of humankind through service, a creative invention and ethical philosophy. — Paul Hawken

Interestingly, the oil companies know very well that in less than 30 years they will not only be charging very high prices, but that they will be uncompetitive with renewables. — Paul Hawken

We assume that everything's becoming more efficient, and in an immediate sense that's true; our lives are better in many ways. But that improvement has been gained through a massively inefficient use of natural resources. — Paul Hawken

Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. — Paul Hawken

The financial capital is being concentrated by corporations, institutional investors, and even our pension funds, and being reinvested in companies that repeat this process because it provides the highest return on that financial capital. — Paul Hawken

When the planes still swoop down and aerial spray a field in order to kill a predator insect with pesticides, we are in the Dark Ages of commerce. — Paul Hawken

Information from destructive activities going back a hundred years right up until today is being incorporated into the system. And as that happens the underlying framework of industrialism is collapsing and causing disintegration. — Paul Hawken

How is it that we have created an economic system that tells us it is cheaper to destroy the earth and exhaust its people than to nurture them both? Is it rational to have an pricing system which discounts the future and sells off the past? How did we create an economic system that confused capital liquidation with income? — Paul Hawken

And also, more and more businesses really want to do the right thing. They feel better about themselves, their workers feel better, and so do their customers. I think this is equally true in the transnational corporations, but it is harder to express in those situations. — Paul Hawken

If there is to be an ecologically sound society, it will have to come the grass roots up, not from the top down. — Paul Hawken

Businesses who are members of Businesses for Social Responsibility or the Social Venture Network are internalizing costs on a voluntary basis and therefore raising their costs of doing business, but their competitors are not required to. — Paul Hawken

The bottom line is down where it belongs – at the bottom. Far above it in importance are the infinite number of events that produce the profit or loss. — Paul Hawken

It is critical to realize that underlying the extermination of nature is the marginalization of human beings. If we are to save what is wild, what is irreparable and majestic in nature, then we will ironically have to turn to each other and take care of all the human beings here on Earth. There is no boundary that will protect an environment from a suffering humanity. — Paul Hawken

If, as is natural, you focus on the corruption and on those threatened institutions that are trying to prevent change - even though they don't really know what they're trying to prevent - then you can get pessimistic. — Paul Hawken

When the planes still swoop down and aerial spray a field in order to kill a predator insect with pesticides, we are in the Dark Ages of commerce. Maybe one thousandth of this aerial insecticide actually prevents the infestation. The balance goes to the leaves, into the soil, into the water, into all forms of wildlife, into ourselves. What is good for the balance sheet is wasteful of resources and harmful to life. — Paul Hawken

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. — Paul Hawken

The problems to be faced are vast and complex, but come down to this: 6.6 billion people are breeding exponentially. The process of fulfilling their wants and needs is stripping earth of its biotic capacity to produce life; a climactic burst of consumption by a single species is overwhelming the skies, earth, waters, and fauna. — Paul Hawken

My advice for people is to love the world they are in, in whatever way makes sense to them. It may be a devotional practice, it may be song or poetry, it may be by gardening, it may be as an activist, scientist, or community leader. The path to restoration extends from our heart to the heart of sentient beings, and that path will be different for every person. — Paul Hawken

First we need to decide what needs to be done. Then we do it. And then we ask if it is possible. — Paul Hawken

If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren't pessimistic, you don’t have the correct data. If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren't optimistic, you haven’t got a heart. — Paul Hawken

Sustainability is an economic state where the demands placed upon the environment by people and commerce can be met without reducing the capacity of the environment to provide for future generations. It can also be expressed in the simple terms of an economic golden rule for the restorative economy: Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, make amends if you do. — Paul Hawken

We can no longer prosper by increasing human productivity. The more we try to do, the more poverty we will create. — Paul Hawken

We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital. — Paul Hawken

We are losing our living systems, social systems, cultural systems, governing systems, stability, and our constitutional health, and we're surrendering it all at the same time. — Paul Hawken

We have reached a point where the value we do add to our economy is now being outweighed by the value we are removing, not only from future generations in terms of diminished resources, but from ourselves in terms of unlivable cities, deadening jobs, deteriorating health, and rising crime. In biological terms, we have become a parasite and are devouring our host. — Paul Hawken

Local companies don't have to internalize their costs, and few actually do, but they tend to more often because the owners live there and they have to show their face in town, and their kids play with other kids. — Paul Hawken

At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. — Paul Hawken

Don't go to business school. — Paul Hawken

Green business is not about tie-dyed T-shirts. It's about transforming the industrial system itself into one that looks at all the connections. — Paul Hawken

You are Brilliant and the Earth is Hiring. — Paul Hawken

We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich. — Paul Hawken

How much harm does a company have to do before we question its right to exist? — Paul Hawken

Business is correct to defend its right to act in order to produce a vigorous and engaging prosperity. But it is wrong if it forgets that this freedom can only be experienced within the discipline of social responsibility. — Paul Hawken

What a great time to be born! What a great time to be alive! Because this generation gets to essentially completely change the world. — Paul Hawken

Mother's milk would be banned by the food safety laws of industrialized nations if it were sold as a packaged good. — Paul Hawken

Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done. — Paul Hawken

The great thing about the dilemma we're in is that we get to re-imagine every single thing we do...There isn't a single thing that doesn't require a complete remake. There are two ways of looking at that. One is: Oh my gosh, what a big burden. The other way, which I prefer, is: What a great time to be born! What a great time to be alive! Because this generation gets to essentially completely change the world. — Paul Hawken

The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. — Paul Hawken

Life Lessons by Paul Hawken

1. Paul Hawken teaches us to be mindful of our environment and to take responsibility for our actions and their impact on the world around us.
2. He encourages us to think critically about our use of natural resources and to take steps to reduce our environmental footprint.
3. He also reminds us to be mindful of our interconnectedness with the natural world, and to strive to create a more sustainable future for all.