Quote

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

Derrick Jensen

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Derrick Jensen
Age: 63
Born: 1960
Born: December 19
Author
Environmentalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Writer
Firsts
First
Make
Onion
Like
Onions
Layers
Cry
Lying
Another

More quotes by Derrick Jensen

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So many indigenous people have said to me that the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that even the most open-minded westerners generally view listening to the natural world as a metaphor, as opposed to the way the world really is. Trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us.
Derrick Jensen
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You can rarely prove something to someone who does not want to see it proven, and even more to the point, you can almost never prove something to someone who has financial or ideological reasons to not see it proven.
Derrick Jensen
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From the beginning, this culture - civilization - has been a culture of occupation.
Derrick Jensen
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No matter what we call it, poison is still poison, death is still death, and industrial civilization is still causing the greatest mass extinction in the history of the planet.
Derrick Jensen
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Civilization can never be sustainable.
Derrick Jensen
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There is always money to kill people. There is never enough money for life affirming ends.
Derrick Jensen
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We cannot hope to create a sustainable culture with any but sustainable souls.
Derrick Jensen
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To pretend that civilization can exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation.
Derrick Jensen
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All we want, whether we are honeybees, salmon, trash-collecting ants, ponderosa pines, coyotes, human beings, or stars, is to love and be loved, to be accepted, cherished, and celebrated simply for being who we are. Is that so very difficult?
Derrick Jensen
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Surely by now there can be few here who still believe the purpose of government is to protect us from the destructive activities of corporations. At last most of us must understand that the opposite is true: that the primary purpose of government is to protect those who run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens.
Derrick Jensen
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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.
Derrick Jensen
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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?
Derrick Jensen
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Learning has to come from doing, not intellectualizing.
Derrick Jensen
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Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.
Derrick Jensen
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By deafening ourselves to the emotional consequences of violence we have become confused by its relationship to sex. We have come to believe that violence equals aggression, and we have come to base our model of sexuality on our model of violence... converting an act of aggression into an act of consensual sexuality.
Derrick Jensen
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Stand with me. Stand and fight. I am one, and we would be two. Two more might join and we would be four. When four more join we will be eight. We will be eight people fighting whom others will join. And then more people. And more. Stand and fight.
Derrick Jensen
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The process of schooling does not give birth to human beings - as education should but never will so long as it springs from the collective consciousness of our culture - but instead it teaches us to value abstract rewards at the expense of our autonomy, curiosity, interior lives, and time.
Derrick Jensen
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If you only had a limited time to life (which is of course the case), how would you spend your time?
Derrick Jensen
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We have a need for enchantment that is as deep and devoted as our need for food and water.
Derrick Jensen
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The stories we are told shape the way we see the world, which shapes the way we experience the world.
Derrick Jensen