Vandana Shiva Quotes
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The spinning wheel became the symbol of Indian independence. So we always say, "if the spinning wheel was the symbol of our first independence, then the seed is the symbol of our second independence."
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Whatever happens to seed affects the web of life.
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The fact that I still find so much beauty in a handicraft is because my mother taught us to see not just the craft as a product but the craft as an embodiment of human creativity and human labor.
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Soil, not oil, holds the future for humanity.
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When you don't take into account the way ecological systems work, then you do damage.
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We have managed to make the celebration of diversity our mode of resistance.
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Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative.
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I think the structures of exclusion are more systematically built up in American society, for example, so that young girls interested in science eventually lose their confidence over time. The structures of exclusion work against them. We have other structures of exclusion in India, but not around modern scientific knowledge.
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If you see cattle as a source of organic manure, animal energy, as well as milk products, then Indian cattle are not inferior. It is only when you measure them as milk machines that they become inferior. What if we measured the dairy cows of America or Jersey or the Swiss Alps in terms of their work functions? They would be terribly inferior.
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Biopiracy (is) biological theft; illegal collection of indigenous plants by corporations who patent them for their own use.
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That amazing power of being able to stand with total courage in the face of total power and not be afraid. That is stri shakti.
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I think what we owe each other is a celebration of life and to replace fear and hopelessness with fearlessness and joy.
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The best and most evolved technologies are those that do not destroy the very base on which we live
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It's worse than slave trade because what is being traded is the very knowledge that makes survival possible for 80 percent of the people of this world. These 80 percent live on the biodiversity and the knowledge they have evolved as part of a rich collective heritage involving the use of seeds for growing crops and medicinal plants for healing.
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In traditional agriculture, the soil is the mother. She's the mother who gives, to whom you must give back.
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Unless the poor of the world agitate for themselves to be heard, there will be no changes in their circumstances.
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Today the environmental movement has become opposed to issues of justice. You can see this in the way issues are framed. It's a permanent replay of jobs-versus-the-environment, in nature-versus-bread. These are extremely artificial dichotomies.
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The poorest of families, the poorest of children, are subsidizing the growth of the largest agribusinesses in the world. I think its time we recognized that in free trade the poor farmer, the small farmer, is ending up having to pay royalties to the Monsantos of the world.
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I didn't leave physics because of boredom. I left it because other issues compelled me in a bigger way. And I always say to myself, "When I'm 60, I'd like to go back to what I interrupted."
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Something is very, very wrong when people dont have access to drinking water, and Coke creates its market out of that scarcity.
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The end of consumerism and accumulation is the beginning of the joy of living.
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The problem of numbers can only be dealt with by recognizing that people have a fundamental right to economic security. If you provide them with economic and environmental security, the population will stabilize itself.
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We will either defend the rights of people and the earth, and for that we have to dismantle the rights that corporations have assigned to themselves, or corporations will in the next three decades destroy this planet, in terms of human possibilities.
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The Chipko activists have always been close to my parents, since my father was among the few forestry officials who supported them within the bureaucracy. And I was involved with the Chipko movement in my student days.