If you can’t eat it, shoot it, or wear it, don’t bring it.

Instead of buying six things, buy one thing that you really like. Don’t keep buying just for the sake of it.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

By the time we see that climate change is really bad, your ability to fix it is extremely limited… The carbon gets up there, but the heating effect is delayed. And then the effect of that heat on the species and ecosystem is delayed. That means that even when you turn virtuous, things are actually going to get worse for quite a while.

I have a company, and I’ve got to think about that. I’m trying to do my best there, and that’s a much harder task. We recycle as much as possible, and we conserve. But I’ve always been one to save everything – I even walk up stairs on the very inside or the very outside to not wear out the tread.

All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

I don’t care about money.

I spend a lot of time just, you know, with my girlfriend and my dog. And I mean, we don’t have a lot of furniture in our house, so it’s really simple. And we’re trying to build products for everyone in the world, right. And you don’t want to get isolated to do that.

I have a garden in my backyard that’s completely organic, which I’m very proud of.

People tell me that they are so hopeful when they see me and other children ‚school-striking,‘ and they say, ‚Oh the children are going to save us.‘ But no, we aren’t. We are too young to be able to do that. We don’t have time to wait for us to grow up and fix this in the future.

If we could establish a deep abiding relationship with nature, we would never kill an animal for our appetite; we would never harm, vivisect, a monkey, a dog, a guinea pig for our benefit. We would find other ways to heal our wounds, heal our bodies.

Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

The last suit that you wear, you don’t need any pockets.

Buy less. Choose well. Make it last. Quality, not quantity. Everybody’s buying far too many clothes.

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

We are not the sum of our possessions.

We need enlightenment, not just individually but collectively, to save the planet. We need to awaken ourselves. We need to practice mindfulness if we want to have a future, if we want to save ourselves and the planet.

We should all grow our own food and do our own waste processing, we really should.

All I wanted to do was write – at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn’t need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.

I believe that the whole idea of the consumer society is tottering. We’ve kept ourselves going by producing more and more goods, most of which people don’t need. I’m anti-consumerism; I own four pairs of black Levis and that’s it.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

I threw my cup away when I saw a child drinking from his hands at the trough.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

I mean, people aren’t continuing like this and not doing anything because they are evil, or because they don’t want to. We aren’t destroying the biosphere because we are selfish. We are doing it simply because we are unaware.

It felt like I was the only one who cared about the climate and the ecological crisis. My parents didn’t care about it, my classmates didn’t care about it, my relatives didn’t care about this. I mean nobody I knew cared about this and I felt like I was the only one.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?

The thing that’s made me open my eyes to what was happening to the environment and climate was films and documentaries.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

The more you know the less you need to say.

The only meat I eat is from animals I’ve killed myself.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

I don’t spend too much time on my phone, laptop or television. However, I do occasionally watch documentaries and shows on streaming platforms.

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.

Elegance is refusal.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

The Tao teaches us to let go of things. Use the 80/20 rule. If you take all your clothes, you’ll find out that you only wear 20 percent of them. Take what you have and don’t use and circulate it. Give stuff to people who truly need it. After all, we come into this world with nothing; we leave this world with nothing.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

Some people have a hard time getting rid of stuff. If that’s you, pray for God to give you the courage to get rid of things you don’t really need or things He wants you to give away. This will help keep your surroundings organized and clutter-free.

I’ve only wanted paper and beautiful colors. It was my dream, and it still is my dream. And books. They’re all I need, and the rest I can do without.

To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.

In California, they don’t throw their garbage away – they make it into TV shows.

Simplify, simplify.

There aren’t many things that are universally cool, and it’s cool not to litter. I’d never do it.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

I’m frugal. I’m not a very acquisitive woman. I never waste food. If you prepare your own food, you engage with the world, it tastes alive. It tastes good.

A place for everything, everything in its place.

When I was 11 I became very depressed. It had a lot to do with the climate and ecological crisis. I thought everything was just so wrong and nothing was happening and there’s no point in anything.

I think it is a good thing to buy less and choose well – it’s good for the environment and to be fair it’s also good for me because my clothes are quite expensive.

I’m generous. I give good tips. It’s just – the way I live my life, ironically enough, is: I don’t want anything. I’m not a consumer. I don’t crave objects.

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.

What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don’t actually improve their lives.

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

Material things are delightful, but they’re not important.

I remember I used to sleep on my records. In a room with no furniture. I remember I used to sleep in my car.

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.

Our economic system, run for profit and waste and based primarily on the extractive industries, is the cause of climate change. We have wasted the earth’s treasure and we can no longer exploit it cheaply.

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make – and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn’t quite work.