Satish Kumar Quotes
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Multinational corporations and a market economy have transformed human beings into instruments of making money. Human beings should be the end. And money should be the means to an end.
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We have to shift our attitude of ownership of nature to relationship with nature. The moment you change from ownership to relationship, you create a sense of the sacred.
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What we call 'economic growth' is in fact a growth in waste and a decline in the health of natural habitat
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It doesn't matter where or how it is grown as long as it is packaged in plastic, put on the supermarket shelves, and bought as a commodity. In the New Story food is not commodity. Food is sacred. We need to be connected with soil, with animals that we take care of.
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Your children are not your children. They are lives longing for itself. They come here with their own destiny. Give them your love. They will find their own way.
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We need to develop a sense of sufficiency to be happy.
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Quality and perfection are achieved with time. You do not create a perfect painting or a perfect poem by hurrying. Time is always coming.
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If individuals start to walk on the path of spirit and feel a sense of the sacred connectedness, then social, economic and political problems will also begin to get resolved.
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You have no skills in your hands. You have no education of understanding the meaning and the purpose and the compassion and the relationship. You have just a profession.
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The old story is a story of measurement. And the New Story is to bring measurement and meaning together. You cannot measure meaning.
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Before the scientific rationalism took hold of our minds and before we became succumbed to a materialistic worldview, the Western philosophy was holistic and relational, and even now there are many scientists in the West seeing things totally interconnected.
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Happiness is possible only when we are kind to others and contented within.
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Nature is out there, and we can do what we like to it. We can cut down the rain forest. We can put animals in factory farms and slaughter them as we like. We can over-fish the oceans. We can pollute the rivers. We can pollute the water and change climate. We are somehow superior to nature. We are somehow rulers of nature.
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We human beings are spiritual beings. We have soul. We have spirit. We have mind. We have consciousness. We want fulfillment, we want happiness, we want satisfaction, we want joy. We want imagination. We want art, culture, music.
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I want to see a New Story education, which is not only about intellectual knowledge - not only about measurement - not only about academic achievement. It is also about heart, feelings, emotions, relationship, love, compassion, generosity, beauty. All these values are part of the heart.
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If we remove ourselves from the world, we are pretending that we can follow our own individual enlightenment and let the rest of the world go to hell, so to speak.
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We live under the power of Modern Consciousness, which means that we are obsessed with progress. Wherever you are is not good enough. We always want to achieve something, rather than experience something. The opposite of this is Spiritual Consciousness. By that I mean you find enchantment in every action you do, rather in just the results of your action. Spiritual Consciousness is not a particular religion but a way of being.
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If you can kill animals, the same attitude can kill human beings. The mentality is the same which exploits nature and which creates wars.
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We depend on the gifts of nature, but these gifts must be received with gratitude and not exploited or abused
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Instead of seeking success we should look for fulfillment. And fulfillment is giving total attention to the process of living.
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People are are moving away from the fossil fuel-based economy, to a more renewable economy. That is what is called the 'transition town' movement. There are three hundred towns in Britain that are making this transition. Taking energy from solar power, from wind power, from water power.
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In spite of nuclear weapons, large numbers of American citizens feel totally insecure. And in spite of so much wealth, industry and technology, many Americans are living under deprivation and anxiety. So happiness is not in accumulation of material goods, it's in sharing and caring.
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If we go on using the Earth uncaringly and without replenishing it, then we are just greedy consumers.
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People are increasingly becoming disappointed and disillusioned with politics and business, and especially with the market economy. They are meeting the physical needs of human beings, maybe. They are providing food. But not good and healthy food.