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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

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Paul Hawken
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: February 8
Environmentalist
Journalist
Writer
San Mateo
California
Paul Gerard Hawken
Political
Produce
Forgets
Order
Responsibility
Vigorous
Right
Within
Engaging
Wrong
Defend
Forget
Experienced
Freedom
Correct
Business
Prosperity
Social
Discipline

More quotes by Paul Hawken

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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
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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
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In short, industrialism is over.
Paul Hawken
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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
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The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them
Paul Hawken
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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.
Paul Hawken
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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
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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
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The bottom line is down where it belongs - at the bottom.
Paul Hawken
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Being a good human being is good business.
Paul Hawken
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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
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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
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Most floods are caused by man, not weather deforestation, levee construction, erosion, and overgrazing all result in the loss of ecosystem services.
Paul Hawken
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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
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Business is the only mechanism on the planet today powerful enough to produce the changes necessary to reverse global environments and social degradation.
Paul Hawken
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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
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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
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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
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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.
Paul Hawken
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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