Quotes by 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.”

“All is connected ... no one thing can change by itself.”

“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.”

“What we are missing, utterly and completely, in this government is accountability.”

“The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them.”

“The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them, ... There is no reason to go backwards in redesigning the city.”

“Theres no in-between. Either Audible will be wallpaper or it will be a billion-dollar-plus company.”

“Eliminate numerical quotas, including Management by Objectives.”

“Management by objective works - if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you dont.”

“I speak BASIC to clients, 1-2-3 to management, and mumble to myself”

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.

The bottom line is down where it belongs - at the bottom.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. 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.

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 create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

Wrong is an addictive, repetitive story; Right is where the movement is.

If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and arent pessimistic, you dont have the correct data. If you meet people in this unnamed movement and arent optimistic, you havent got a heart.

When cattle ranchers clear rain forests to raise beef to sell to fast-food chains that make hamburgers to sell to Americans, who have the highest rate of heart disease in the world (and spend the most money per GNP on health care), we can say easily that business is no longer developing the world. We have become its predator.

We need to revise our economic thinking to give full value to our natural resources. This revised economics will stabilize both the theory and the practice of free-market capitalism. It will provide business and public policy with a powerful new tool for economic development, profitability, and the promotion of the public good.

It is possible for the assembly-line worker consigned to tightening the bolts on the transmission and the office worker who processes medical insurance claims to work with pride and efficiency, but its not easy to maintain that attitude.

The responses that environmentalists evoke - fear, anxiety, numbness, despair - are not helpful, even if they are understandable. It should be fascinating, even enthralling, to be in the milieu of environmental change.