Vandana Shiva Quotes
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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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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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We are either going to have a future where women lead the way to make peace with the Earth or we are not going to have a human future at all.
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I still can't figure out what inspired me to do physics. But since I was nine or ten years old, I wanted to be like [Albert] Einstein. He was my hero. I knew no physicists. I knew no scientists. I had nobody around me. And I went to a convent that didn't even have higher mathematics and physics. I taught myself these subjects in order to get into university.
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My training in science is actually one that is very critical of mechanistic science. I was trained in quantum theory which emerged at the turn of the last century. We are a whole century behind in absorbing the leaps that quantum theory made for the human mind.
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When it comes to owning the seed for collecting royalties, the GMO companies say, 'it's mine.' But when it comes to contamination, cross-pollination, health problems, the response is we're not liable.
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My father had been a forester and I had grown up on those hills. I had seen forests and streams disappear. I jumped into Chipko movement and started to work with the peasant women. I learned from them about what forests mean for a rural woman in India in terms of firewood and fodder and medicinal plants and rich knowledge.
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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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In the seed and the soil, we find the answers to every one of the crises we face. The crises of violence and war. The crises of hunger and disease. The crisis of the destruction of democracy.
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Earth Democracy connects people in circles of care, cooperation, and compassion instead of dividing them through competition and conflict, fear and hatred.
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You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.
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I did my masters in elementary particles. But the foundations of elementary particles is quantum theory and there were too many conceptual problems around quantum theory that I couldn't live with. So I decided I was going to work on the foundations of quantum theory. That's what I did my Ph.D on.
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Water must be free for sustenance needs. Since nature gives water to us free of cost, buying and selling it for profit violates our inherent right to nature's gift and denies the poor of their human rights.
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The liberation of the earth, the liberation of women, the liberation of all humanity is the next step of freedom we need to work for, and it's the next step of peace that we need to create.
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I absolutely get thrills from taking on these big guys and recognizing how, behind all their power, they are so empty. I just keep going at it. Each of these balloons does deflate. Ive seen a lot of balloons get deflated in my life.
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The end of consumerism and accumulation is the beginning of the joy of living.
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In India, crossbreeding programs aimed at mimicking the milk yields of Western cows like the Jerseys and the Holsteins actually breed out the capacity of our animals to pull ploughs and pulley-cars. So, thanks to cross-breeding programs, we now have humpless cattle with no stamina.
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It's not an investment if its destroying the planet.
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Nature has gifted this rich biological diversity to us. We will not allow it to become the monopoly of a handful of corporations. We will keep it as the basis of our wealth and our sustenance.