Derrick Jensen Quotes - Page 2

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Children Culture Giving Hope Lying Violence

Violence, and evil, doesn't always come dressed in black, and it doesn't always look like Charles Manson. Nor does it always come to us as obvious and arrogant[...]. Often it comes to us with the simple plea to be reasonable.

Derrick Jensen

Simple, Evil, Black

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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

Limited Time, Cases, Courses

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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

Self, Civilization, Ignorant

Derrick Jensen (2006). “Endgame”, p.149, Seven Stories Press

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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

Rocks, Views, Rivers

Derrick Jensen, Aric McBay (2011). “What We Leave Behind”, p.274, Seven Stories Press

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The global industrial economy is the engine for massive environmental degradation and massive human (and nonhuman) impoverishment.

Derrick Jensen

Environmental, Degradation, Economy

Derrick Jensen (2006). “Endgame”, p.195, Seven Stories Press

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Love does not imply pacifism.

Derrick Jensen

Doe, Pacifism

Derrick Jensen (2012). “The Derrick Jensen Reader: Writings on Environmental Revolution”, p.155, Seven Stories Press

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Every morning when I awake I ask myself whether I should write or blow up a dam. I tell myself I should keep writing, though I'm not sure that's right

Derrick Jensen

Morning, Writing, Blow

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Those in power have made it so we have to pay simply to exist on the planet. We have to pay for a place to sleep, and we have to pay for food. If we don't, people with guns come and force us to pay. That's violent.

Derrick Jensen

Sleep, Gun, People

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The pretense that humans are superior to nonhumans is entirely unsupportable. I have seen no compelling evidence that humans are particularly more "intelligent" than any other creature. I have had long and fruitful relationshis with many nonhuman animals, both domesticated and wild, and have reveled in the bouquet of radically different intelligences - different forms, not different "quantities" that they have introduced to me, each in his or her own time, in his or her own way.

Derrick Jensen

Intelligent, Animal, Long

Derrick Jensen, Karen Tweedy-Holmes (2007). “Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos”, p.87, No Voice Unheard

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If your community is founded on an injustice, that injustice cannot be questioned.

Derrick Jensen

Community, Injustice, Ifs

Derrick Jensen (2004). “The Culture of Make Believe”, p.19, Chelsea Green Publishing

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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

Reading, Sleep, Thinking

Derrick Jensen (2004). “A Language Older Than Words”, p.109, Chelsea Green Publishing

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Slavery was a central concern of governance form the time of the first nation-state. The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest know set of laws for governing an empire, prescribed death for anyone who harbored a fugitive or otherwise helped a slave to escape. The relationship between the law and bondage goes back even farther: Indeed, the oldest extant legal documents don't concern the sale of land, houses, or even animals, but slaves.

Derrick Jensen

Animal, Law, Land

Derrick Jensen (2004). “The Culture of Make Believe”, p.60, Chelsea Green Publishing

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We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.

Derrick Jensen

Integrity, Example, Roles

Derrick Jensen (2012). “The Derrick Jensen Reader: Writings on Environmental Revolution”, p.381, Seven Stories Press

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In order to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves.

Derrick Jensen

Lying, Order, Way

Derrick Jensen (2006). “Endgame”, p.404, Seven Stories Press

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When dams were erected on the Columbia, salmon battered themselves against the concrete, trying to return home. I expect no less from us. We too must hurl ourselves against and through the literal and metaphorical concrete that contains and constrains us, that keeps us from talking about what is most important to us, that keeps us from living the way our bones know we can, that bars us from our home. It only takes one person to bring down a dam.

Derrick Jensen

Home, Talking, Important

Derrick Jensen (2004). “A Language Older Than Words”, p.75, Chelsea Green Publishing

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But what, precisely, is hope? At a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned the question back on the audience, and here’s the definition we all came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.

Derrick Jensen

Spring, Mean, Agency

Derrick Jensen (2011). “Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization”, p.295, Seven Stories Press

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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

Thinking, Important, Culture

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Hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.

Derrick Jensen

Mean, Agency, Longing

Derrick Jensen (2011). “Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization”, p.295, Seven Stories Press

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Forests precede us and deserts dog our heels.

Derrick Jensen

Dog, Desert, Forests

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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

Spring, Giving, Long

Derrick Jensen (2004). “A Language Older Than Words”, p.104, Chelsea Green Publishing

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Have you ever felt love?
Did you need scientific proof of this? How would you have definitively and scientifically proved your love existed? If you could not prove it, would that mean your love didn't exist? What would you trust: your own feelings, or science?

Derrick Jensen

Love, Trust, Mean

Derrick Jensen (2011). “Dreams”, p.386, Seven Stories Press

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There is always money to kill people. There is never enough money for life affirming ends.

Derrick Jensen

People, Enough, Ends

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

Derrick Jensen

Civilization, Culture, Occupation

Derrick Jensen (2011). “Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization”, p.165, Seven Stories Press

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A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of green paper.

Derrick Jensen

Police, Green, Purpose

Derrick Jensen (2011). “Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization”, p.176, Seven Stories Press

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

Derrick Jensen

Lying, Onions, Layers

Derrick Jensen (2012). “The Derrick Jensen Reader: Writings on Environmental Revolution”, p.36, Seven Stories Press

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Born: December 19, 1960
Occupation: Author
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