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.

Elegance is refusal.

I don’t care about money.

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

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

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’m not very gifted for hairdos. I don’t like gel and all those products.

To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.

It is hard sometimes to always be at the centre of attention, but when you talk about me you also have to talk about the climate.

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 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.

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

The Chinese have figured out that they have a giant environmental problem. Folks in Beijing, some days, literally can’t breathe. Over a million Chinese die prematurely every year because of air pollution.

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

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

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.

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.

That government is best which governs least.

It is crucial that young people are taught sustainable child production and rearing.

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.

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’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.

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

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.

The more you know the less you need to say.

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

In Tanzania, the chimps are isolated in a very tiny patch of forest. I flew over it 13 years ago and realized that, basically, all the trees had gone, that people all around the park are struggling to survive. It became very clear that there was no way to protect the chimps while the people were in this dire circumstance.

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.

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

We are not the sum of our possessions.

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

No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.

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

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

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

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

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.

Simplify, simplify.

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.

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

Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

What I’m always trying to say to the consumer is: buy less, choose well, make it last.

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

When the well is dry, they know the worth of water.

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

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.

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

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

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

We can’t just continue living as if there was no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

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

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

I thought my life was mapped out. Research, living in the forest, teaching and writing. But in ’86 I went to a conference and realised the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them.

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.

Simple goes a long way.

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.

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.