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.
What is the most famous quote by Paul Hawken ?
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.
— Paul Hawken
What can you learn from Paul Hawken (Life Lessons)
- 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.
- He encourages us to think critically about our use of natural resources and to take steps to reduce our environmental footprint.
- 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.
The most delighting Paul Hawken quotes that will transform you to a better person
Following is a list of the best Paul Hawken quotes, including various Paul Hawken inspirational quotes, and other famous sayings by Paul Hawken.
Most floods are caused by man, not weather;
deforestation, levee construction, erosion, and overgrazing all result in the loss of ecosystem services.
All is connected ... no one thing can change by itself.
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.
Business is the only mechanism on the planet today powerful enough to produce the changes necessary to reverse global environments and social degradation.
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.
The future belongs to those who understand that doing more with less is compassionate, prosperous, and enduring, and thus more intelligent, even competitive.
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.
The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them
Sustainability quotes by Paul Hawken
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.
The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Quotations by Paul Hawken that are advocacy and activism
I'd rather fail at something important than succeed at something trivial.
The bottom line is down where it belongs - at the bottom.
Being a good human being is good business.
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.
The promise of business is to increase the general well-being of humankind through service, a creative invention and ethical philosophy.
A local company has more accountability.
What we are missing, utterly and completely, in this government is accountability.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wrong is an addictive, repetitive story; Right is where the movement is.
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.
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.
We are the only species on this planet without full employment.
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?
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.
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.
If there is to be an ecologically sound society, it will have to come the grass roots up, not from the top down.
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.
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.
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.
Luck is earned. Luck is working so hard at your craft, service or enterprise that sooner or later you get a break.
As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth.
It costs the same to send a person to prison or to Harvard. The difference is the curriculum.
If everyone thinks you have a good idea, you´re too late
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
First we need to decide what needs to be done. Then we do it. And then we ask if it is possible.