Janine Benyus Quotes

Quotes about:

• The answers to our questions are everywhere; we just need to change the lens with which we see the world.

  Janine Benyus

  Lenses, Needs, Answers

  63 Copy quote

• The more our world functions like the natural world, the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone.

  Janine Benyus

  Inspirational, Change, Mother

  75 Copy quote

• What if, every time I started to invent something, I asked, 'How would nature solve this?'

  Janine Benyus

  What If, Solve, Ifs

  48 Copy quote

• Biomimicry is innovation inspired by nature. In a society accustomed to dominating or 'improving' nature, this respectful imitation is a radically new approach, a revolution really. Unlike the Industrial Revolution, the Biomimicry Revolution introduces an era based not on what we can extract from nature, but on what we can learn from her.

  Janine Benyus

  Innovation, Eras, Revolution

  Janine M. Benyus (2009). “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature”, p.2, Harper Collins

  94 Copy quote

• After decades of faithful study, ecologists have begun to fathom hidden likenesses among many interwoven systems. ...a canon of nature's laws, strategies, and principles...
  Nature runs on sunlight.
  Nature uses only the energy it needs.
  Nature fits form to function.
  Nature recycles everything.
  Nature rewards cooperation.
  Nature banks on diversity.
  Nature demands local expertise.
  Nature curbs excesses from within.
  Nature taps the power of limits.

  Janine Benyus

  Running, Nature, Law

  52 Copy quote

• When the forest and the city are functionally indistinguishable, then we know we have reached sustainability.

  Janine Benyus

  Cities, Forests, Sustainability

  26 Copy quote

• The answers to how to live sustainably on our planet are all around us.

  Janine Benyus

  Answers, Planets, Our Planet

  19 Copy quote

• Biomimicry is basically taking a design challenge and then finding an ecosystem that's already solved that challenge, and literally trying to emulate what you learn.

  Janine Benyus

  Ecosystems, Design, Challenges

  88 Copy quote

• For the 99 percent of the time we've been on Earth, we were hunter and gatherers, our lives dependent on knowing the fine, small details of our world. Deep inside, we still have a longing to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination, our language, our song and dance, our sense of the divine.

  Janine Benyus

  Song, Nature, Our World

  44 Copy quote

• There are three types of biomimicry - one is copying form and shape, another is copying a process, like photosynthesis in a leaf, and the third is mimicking at an ecosystem's level, like building a nature-inspired city.

  Janine Benyus

  Ecosystems, Cities, Copying

  86 Copy quote

• Life creates conditions conducive to life.

  Janine Benyus

  Biomimicry, Conditions

  "Episode 26: Biomimicry: Janine Benyus is Honored by TIME". "Living Green" with Meredith Medland, podcasts.personallifemedia.com.

  34 Copy quote

• The truth is, natural organisms have managed to do everything we want to do without guzzling fossil fuels, polluting the planet or mortgaging the future.

  Janine Benyus

  Burning Fossil Fuels, Want, Fossils

  7 Copy quote

• If the age of the Earth were a calendar year and today were a breath before midnight on New Year's Eve, we showed up a scant fifteen minutes ago, and all of recorded history has blinked by in the last sixty seconds. Luckily for us, our planet-mates--the fantastic meshwork of plants, animals, and microbes--have been patiently perfecting their wares since March, an incredible 3.8 billion years since the first bacteria. ...After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival.

  Janine Benyus

  New Year, Nature, Animal

  19 Copy quote

• Life solves its problems with well-adapted designs, life-friendly chemistry and smart material and energy use.

  Janine Benyus

  Smart, Design, Friendly

  13 Copy quote

• Virtually all native cultures that have survived without fouling their nests have acknowledged that nature knows best, and have had the humility to ask the bears and wolves and ravens and redwoods for guidance.

  Janine Benyus

  Nature, Humility, Animal

  Janine M. Benyus (2009). “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature”, p.3, Harper Collins

  6 Copy quote

• A solitary American monk named Thomas Berry writes that in our relationship to nature, we have been autistic for centuries. Wrapped tightly in our own version of knowledge, we have been unreceptive to the wisdom of the natural world. To tune in again, to have the "spontaneous environmental rapport" that characterized our ancestors, will take doing something that is perfectly delightful: reimmersing ourselves in the natural world.

  Janine Benyus

  Nature, Writing, Animal

  15 Copy quote

• Biomimicry is … the conscious emulation of life’s genius.

  Janine Benyus

  Genius, Emulation, Conscious

  Janine M. Benyus (2009). “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature”, p.2, Harper Collins

  93 Copy quote

• Biologically inspired materials could revolutionize materials science. People looking at spider silk and abalone shells are looking for new ways to make materials better, cheaper, and with less toxic byproducts.

  Janine Benyus

  People, Toxic, Spiders

  20 Copy quote

• There are literally as many ideas as there are organisms.

  Janine Benyus

  Ideas, Organisms

  6 Copy quote

• Nature works with five polymers. Only five polymers. In the natural world, life builds from the bottom up, and it builds in resilience and multiple uses.

  Janine Benyus

  Resilience, Use, World

  59 Copy quote

• Listening to nature's operating instructions.

  Janine Benyus

  Listening, Instruction

  10 Copy quote

• If we are to use our tools in the service of fitting in on Earth, our basic relationship to nature--even the story we tell ourselves about who we are in the universe--has to change.

  Janine Benyus

  Nature, Animal, Tools

  Janine M. Benyus (2009). “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature”, p.8, Harper Collins

  14 Copy quote

• In reality, we haven't escaped the gravity of life at all. We are still beholden to ecological laws, the same as any other life-form.

  Janine Benyus

  Nature, Animal, Reality

  Janine M. Benyus (2009). “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature”, p.5, Harper Collins

  11 Copy quote

• Trees and bones are constantly reforming themselves along lines of stress. This algorithm has been put into a software program that's now being used to make bridges lightweight, to make building beams lightweight.

  Janine Benyus

  Stress, Bridges, Tree

  5 Copy quote

• For businesses, biomimicry is about bringing a new discipline - biology - to the design table. It's not to write an environmental impact statement, as most biologists in business do right now.

  Janine Benyus

  Writing, Impact, Discipline

  64 Copy quote

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