Satish Kumar famous quotes

Look at what realists have done for us. They have led us to war and climate change, poverty on an unimaginable scale, and wholesale ecological destruction. Half of humanity goes to bed hungry because of all the realistic leaders in the world. I tell people who call me 'unrealistic' to show me what their realism has done. Realism is an outdated, overplayed and wholly exaggerated concept.
-- Satish Kumar

#War #People #Leader

Economy without ecology means managing the human nature relationship without knowing the delicate balance between humankind and the natural world
-- Satish Kumar

#Mean #Knowing #Balance

Sometimes I come across a tree which seems like Buddha or Jesus: loving, compassionate, still, unambitious, enlightened, in eternal meditation, giving pleasure to a pilgrim, shade to a cow, berries to a bird, beauty to its surroundings, health to its neighbors, branches for the fire, leaves for the soil, asking nothing in return, in total harmony with the wind and the rain. How much can I learn from a tree? The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer.
-- Satish Kumar

#Beautiful #Jesus #Prayer

The way to healthy living is to shift from quantitative economic growth to quality of life, food, water and air - to shift from craving to contentment and from greed to gratitude
-- Satish Kumar

#Gratitude #Future #Air

The force and the strength for peace will come from people. And that will happen when people start to realize that all the diversity and differences we see of nationalities, of religions, of cultures, of languages, are all beautiful diversities, for they are only on the surface. And deep down we share the same humanity, the global humanity.
-- Satish Kumar

#Strength #Beautiful #Differences

We depend on the gifts of nature, but these gifts must be received with gratitude and not exploited or abused
-- Satish Kumar

#Gratitude #Environment

If we go on using the Earth uncaringly and without replenishing it, then we are just greedy consumers.
-- Satish Kumar

#Earth #Goes On #Environment

How much I can learn from a tree! The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer.
-- Satish Kumar

#Prayer #Tree #Church

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.
-- Satish Kumar

#Spiritual #Mean #Opposites

The road to climate stability is straight and the solutions simple, and yet scientists, economists, industrialists and politicians are busy making them complicated
-- Satish Kumar

#Simple #Climate #Busy

In the lives of great men, neither did fate give up, NOR DID THEY.
-- Satish Kumar

#Motivational #Giving Up #Fate

So, at the age of nine, I became a monk, and from then on I was there practicing that kind of nonviolence.
-- Satish Kumar

#Age #Nine #Kind

Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth; Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust; Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace; Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe
-- Satish Kumar

#Peace #War #Hate

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.
-- Satish Kumar

#Enlightenment #World #Speak

If you can kill animals, the same attitude can kill human beings. The mentality is the same which exploits nature and which creates wars.
-- Satish Kumar

#Attitude #War #Animal

I and a friend of mine called Mannon talked together, and we both decided to walk this journey.
-- Satish Kumar

#Journey #Together #Walks

There is at the moment in the world a battle going on between those who are pursuing materialistic paths-globalizers of economic growth and those hell-bent on this 'big is better' idea-on the one hand, and on the other hand those who are dedicated to spiritual renewal, more small-scale development, more human scale, more sustainability, more crafts and arts. Where human beings are not just sold to companies and money and those kinds of things. Where human beings have a sacred path.
-- Satish Kumar

#God #Spiritual #Art

Monks will have three begging bowls for their food: one for water, one for liquid food, one for dry food.
-- Satish Kumar

#Water #Dry #Liquid

This was Mahatma Gandhi’s idea, moving from ownership to relationship—seeing that land does not belong to us. We belong to the land. We are not the owners of the land. We are the friends of the land, like friends of the earth. The fundamental shift is in this consciousness that land does not belong to us, we belong to the land.
-- Satish Kumar

#Moving #Land #Ideas

I was pursuing the inner path at the expense of the rest of my being and the rest of the world.
-- Satish Kumar

#World #Path #Expenses

We then came to the Soviet Union. One day we were walking and carrying our banner and distributing a few leaflets in Russian to people, and we met two women on the road.
-- Satish Kumar

#Two #People #One Day

That was my childhood. I grew up with the monks, studying Sanskrit and meditating for hours in the morning and hours in the evening, and going once a day to beg for food.
-- Satish Kumar

#Morning #Childhood #Fatherhood

Human happiness, true prosperity and joyful living can only emerge from a life of elegant simplicity, embedded in the arts and crafts.
-- Satish Kumar

#Art #Simplicity #Crafts

We must realize that violence is not confined to physical violence. Fear is violence, caste discrimination is violence, exploitation of others, however subtle, is violence, segregation is violence, thinking ill of others and condemning others are violence. In order to reduce individual acts of physical violence, we must work to eliminate violence at all levels, mental, verbal, personal, and social, including violence to animals, plants, and all other forms of life.
-- Satish Kumar

#Thinking #Animal #Order

What we call 'economic growth' is in fact a growth in waste and a decline in the health of natural habitat
-- Satish Kumar

#Growth #Habitat #Waste

It became extremely important that we go and see the four heads of the governments, and the message was delivered, with the tea packets, to all these heads.
-- Satish Kumar

#Government #Tea #Important

One was a book I read by Mahatma Gandhi. In it was a passage where he said that religion, the pursuing of the inner journey, should not be separated from the pursuing of the outer and social journey, because we are not isolated beings.
-- Satish Kumar

#Book #Journey #Social

Our relationship with Nature... best way of forging this relationship... be a pilgrim and not a tourist on Planet Earth
-- Satish Kumar

#Earth #Way #Tourists

That was my real education in the world - I learned politics, the social and cultural life of India, Hindu tradition and religion, and Buddhism.
-- Satish Kumar

#Real #Buddhism #World

Without the land, the rivers, the oceans, the forests, the sunshine, the minerals and thousands of natural resources we would have no economy whatsoever
-- Satish Kumar

#Ocean #Sunshine #Land