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From the beginning, this culture - civilization - has been a culture of occupation.

Derrick Jensen

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Derrick Jensen
Age: 63
Born: 1960
Born: December 19
Author
Environmentalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Writer
Culture
Occupation
Civilization
Beginning

More quotes by 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
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To be clear, civilization is not the same as society. Civilization is a specific, hierarchical organization based on 'power over.' Dismantling civilization, taking down that power structure, does not mean the end of all social order. It should ultimately mean more justice, more local control, more democracy, and more human rights, not less.
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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A culture that values production over life values the wrong things, because it will produce things at the expense of living beings, human or otherwise.
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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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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Many Indians have told me that the most basic difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that Westerners view the world as dead, and not as filled with speaking, thinking, feeling subjects as worthy and valuable as themselves.
Derrick Jensen
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I think it's very important for us to start to build a culture of resistance, because what we're doing isn't working, clearly.
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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For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.
Derrick Jensen
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I thought a forest was made up entirely of trees, but now I know that the foundation lies below ground, in the fungi.
Derrick Jensen
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All writers are propagandists.
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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There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists.
Derrick Jensen
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I wondered what it does to each of us to spend the majority of our waking hours doings things we'd rather not do, wishing we were outside or simply elsewhere, wishing we were reading, thinking, making love, fishing, sleeping, or simply having time to figure out who the hell we are and what the hell we're doing.
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 believe Christianity stands in opposition to slavery is at best to think anachronistically and at worst to not understand Christianity.
Derrick Jensen
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The big dividing line is not and has never been between those who advocate more or less militant forms of resistance, or between mainstream and grassroots activists. The dividing line is between those who do something and those who do nothing.
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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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