Simple wisdom for simple living

Utopia

Let your community be small, with only a few people;
Keep tools in abundance, but do not depend upon them;
Appreciate your life and be content with your home;
Sail boats and ride horses, but don’t go too far;
Keep weapons and armor, but do not employ them;
Let everyone read and write,
Eat well and make beautiful things.

Live peacefully and delight in your own society;
Dwell within cock-crow of your neighbors,
But maintain your independence from them.

-Verse 80, Tao Te Ching

“Our life here on earth is a privilege, not a right.  We need to step softly, for this blue green jewel we live on does not need us. We need her.” – Eric T. Konefal

“Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple. – Bill Mollison

“Those who do not recognize what is enough will never have enough.” - Jay Shafer, The Small House Book & Tumbleweed Tiny House Co.

“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.” – John Muir

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.” – E.F. Schumacher

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. – William Bruce Cameron (often misattributed to Albert Einstein)

“The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity.” – E.F. Schumacher

“…infinite growth on a finite planet is a daydream for fools.” – John Michael Greer

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” – Edward Abbey

“If there’s anything that worries me, really worries me deeply, it’s how we’re going to overcome American and modern peoples’ detachment from the natural world, and how we’re going to get them connected again. Unless we’re connected, we’re never going to be able to save the planet. I mean we can’t isolate ourselves in these boxes that are artificially maintained by energy that we don’t even recognize as maintaining us, and save the planet. We have to be in touch with what the planet is calling out for us to do.” - Joan Gussow

---