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.

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

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

If burning fossil fuels was so bad that it threatened our very existence, how could we just continue like before? Why were there no restrictions? Why wasn’t it made illegal? To me, that did not add up.

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

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

A place for everything, everything in its place.

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

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

Elegance is refusal.

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

I don’t throw lavish parties or nothing like that – I just want a bed and a TV.

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.

Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last hardly longer than those of wood rats, while their more enduring monuments, excepting those wrought on the forests by the fires they made to improve their hunting grounds, vanish in a few centuries.

In just a few hundred years, we will have to cover the entire surface of the Earth in solar cells if we want to continue to grow our energy usage.

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.

This is absolutely bizarre that we continue to subsidize highways beyond the gasoline tax, airlines, and we don’t subsidize, we don’t want to subsidize a national rail system that has environmental impact.

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.

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

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

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

Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill.

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

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

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

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

We should no longer measure our wealth and success in the graph that shows economic growth, but in the curve that shows the emissions of greenhouse gases.

I personally have stopped flying. I have stopped eating meat and dairy.

Simple goes a long way.

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.

We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we’re so dependent on oil, not just for fuel but also plastic. If plastic vanished, there would be total chaos. We have to think quite carefully about using oil and its derivatives, because it’s not going to be around forever.

We will have to leave this planet, and we’re going to leave it, and it’s going to make this planet better.

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

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that’s stripped down.

A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.

By stopping flying, you don’t only reduce your own carbon footprint but also that sends a signal to other people around you that the climate crisis is a real thing and that helps push a political movement.

I’m not saying that people should stop flying. I’m just saying it needs to be easier to be climate neutral.

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

You’re never going to get the amount of CO2 emitted to go down unless you deal with the one magic metric, which is CO2 per kilowatt-hour.

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.

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

The more you know the less you need to say.

In the absence of sound oversight, responsible businesses are forced to compete against unscrupulous and underhanded businesses, who are unencumbered by any restrictions on activities that might harm the environment, or take advantage of middle-class families, or threaten to bring down the entire financial system.

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.

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’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.

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.

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.

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.

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

War contributes greatly to global warming, which shouldn’t surprise us. All those bombs going off, all those rockets, all those planes and helicopters. All that fuel of various kinds being used. It pollutes the air and water of this very fragile and interconnected planet.

In most mills, only the best portions of the best trees are used, while the ruins are left on the ground to feed great fires which kill much of what is left of the less desirable timber, together with the seedlings on which the permanence of the forest depends.

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

That government is best which governs least.

Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.

We only need so much to survive, but this world we live in tells us we need more stuff to be happy. We’re inundated with our televisions, the Internet and advertising that says in order to be happy you have to have these things. When you say, ‚Gimme, gimme, gimme,‘ you will always be in short supply.

Personally, I don’t wear fur.

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.

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