All is connected... no one thing can change by itself.
--Paul Hawken
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
At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product.
--Paul Hawken
Being a good human being is good business.
--Paul Hawken
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
Capitalism, as practiced, is a financially profitable, non-sustainable aberration in human development.
--Paul Hawken
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
Don't go to business school.
--Paul Hawken
First we need to decide what needs to be done. Then we do it. And then we ask if it is possible.
--Paul Hawken
Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.
--Paul Hawken
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
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
How much harm does a company have to do before we question its right to exist?
--Paul Hawken
I'd rather fail at something important than succeed at something trivial.
--Paul Hawken
If everyone thinks you have a good idea, you're too late.
--Paul Hawken
If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren't pessimistic, you don't have the correct data. If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren't optimistic, you haven't got a heart.
--Paul Hawken
It costs the same to send a person to prison or to Harvard. The difference is the curriculum.
--Paul Hawken
Local companies don't have to internalize their costs, and few actually do, but they tend to more often because the owners live there and they have to show their face in town, and their kids play with other kids.
--Paul Hawken
Luck is earned. Luck is working so hard at your craft, service or enterprise that sooner or later you get a break.
--Paul Hawken
Mother's milk would be banned by the food safety laws of industrialized nations if it were sold as a packaged good.
--Paul Hawken
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.
--Paul Hawken
The bottom line is down where it belongs- at the bottom.
--Paul Hawken
The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them.
--Paul Hawken
The future belongs to those who understand that doing more with less is compassionate, prosperous, and enduring, and thus more intelligent, even competitive.
--Paul Hawken
The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer.
--Paul Hawken
This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don't poison the water, soil, or air, don't let the earth get overcrowded, and don't touch the thermostat have been broken.
--Paul Hawken
We are speeding up our lives and working harder in a futile attempt to buy the time to slow down and enjoy it.
--Paul Hawken
We are the only species on this planet without full employment.
--Paul Hawken
We assume that everything's becoming more efficient, and in an immediate sense that's true; our lives are better in many ways. But that improvement has been gained through a massively inefficient use of natural resources.
--Paul Hawken
We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich; it is a way to be rich.
--Paul Hawken
We can no longer prosper by increasing human productivity. The more we try to do, the more poverty we will create.
--Paul Hawken
We have an economy that tells us it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet.
--Paul Hawken
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
Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.
--Paul Hawken
Wrong is an addictive, repetitive story; Right is where the movement is.
--Paul Hawken
You can blame people who knock things over in the dark or you can begin to light candles. You're only at fault if you know about the problem and choose to do nothing.
--Paul Hawken
Found 36 occurence(s) in 52,075 quotation(s).