Satish Kumar 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 Realism is an outdated, overplayed and wholly exaggerated concept.

Kennedy had been assassinated a month or so before. So we walked to the grave of John Kennedy and ended our walking symbolically at the Arlington National Cemetery.

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.

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.

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

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.

This gives us more time to attend the inner need.

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

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

People are are moving away from the fossil fuel-based economy, to a more renewable economy. That is what is called the 'transition town' movement. There are three hundred towns in Britain that are making this transition. Taking energy from solar power, from wind power, from water power.

At the moment, for example, maybe ten percent of money in the world is related to goods and services. Ninety percent of money is just moving around the world, chasing money. So, money has become the ruler. And we have become the servant.

Education provides you a profession. But not vocation. You do it only because you need to work to earn money to buy your food, buy your clothes, pay the bills. Our life has a greater meaning, and a greater purpose.

I want New Story education to be skilling human beings and young people to provide basic human needs. Technology and all other things are icing on the cake.

With slight risk of exaggeration you could say that he walked almost every mile of the Indian land.

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

Before the scientific rationalism took hold of our minds and before we became succumbed to a materialistic worldview, the Western philosophy was holistic and relational, and even now there are many scientists in the West seeing things totally interconnected.

All the big problems of the world today are routed in the philosophy of separateness and dualism.

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.

I want to see a New Story education, which is not only about intellectual knowledge - not only about measurement - not only about academic achievement. It is also about heart, feelings, emotions, relationship, love, compassion, generosity, beauty. All these values are part of the heart.

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

I grew with it, and I used to go to see the monks, who had no possessions, even more extreme than my mother.

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

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.

"Pursuit of happiness" implies that we're running after happiness and happiness is running away from us. It also implies that happiness is somewhere out there, in material goods, which we have to pursue, whereas I believe that it is an illusion happiness is not out there, it is within us.

Because the Western civilization is dominated by dualistic thinking, holistic scientists and philosophers don't get the recognition they deserve.

Each of us needs to eliminate our anger, fear and greed. The roots of social conflicts and political tensions are in personal anger, fear and greed.

Earth is a living entity. And if it's a living organism, then we have to have a reverence for all life. Food should be local, organic rather than grown with chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides.

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

Happiness is possible only when we are kind to others and contented within.

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

If happiness was in money or power, then America should be the happiest country in the world, but it is not.

If individuals start to walk on the path of spirit and feel a sense of the sacred connectedness, then social, economic and political problems will also begin to get resolved.

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

If we had adhered to the concept of connectedness, then we would not have created nuclear weapons, huge armies and global warming.

If we had kept the vision of interconnectedness, we would not have created the kind of environmental crisis facing the world today.

In addition to world conflicts, the most challenging problem we face today is hunger, deprivation and social injustice. Because we're ruled by separate self-interest, we go on accumulating personal wealth, ignoring the well being of the others.

In fact, the environmental crisis is related to the crisis of aesthetics, crisis of social cohesion and the crisis of spiritual values.

In spite of nuclear weapons, large numbers of American citizens feel totally insecure. And in spite of so much wealth, industry and technology, many Americans are living under deprivation and anxiety. So happiness is not in accumulation of material goods, it's in sharing and caring.

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

Instead of seeking success we should look for fulfillment. And fulfillment is giving total attention to the process of living.

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.

It doesn't matter where or how it is grown as long as it is packaged in plastic, put on the supermarket shelves, and bought as a commodity. In the New Story food is not commodity. Food is sacred. We need to be connected with soil, with animals that we take care of.

It is only an illusion that time is running out. This is where the problem of fear arises. We become anxious that "I don't have enough time and I have to do everything quickly." We need to turn our attention away from results, achievements and outcomes.

Large numbers of young people are waking up. And they are saying, "We are not here just to work for multinational corporations and make money for them. We are here to live. We have to find the meaning of life."

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

Multinational corporations and a market economy have transformed human beings into instruments of making money. Human beings should be the end. And money should be the means to an end.

Nature is out there, and we can do what we like to it. We can cut down the rain forest. We can put animals in factory farms and slaughter them as we like. We can over-fish the oceans. We can pollute the rivers. We can pollute the water and change climate. We are somehow superior to nature. We are somehow rulers of nature.

Of course, we all need to have basic necessities met, such as good health care, good food, good education and good housing. But what is good? Having too much is bad, as having too little is also bad.

Our modern world of old story is completely failing humanity. This is the reason that increasing numbers of people have become and are becoming disillusioned from politics. People don't like voting. Whoever you vote, government gets in. Whatever they promise, they never fulfill.

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

People are increasingly becoming disappointed and disillusioned with politics and business, and especially with the market economy. They are meeting the physical needs of human beings, maybe. They are providing food. But not good and healthy food.

Quality and perfection are achieved with time. You do not create a perfect painting or a perfect poem by hurrying. Time is always coming.

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.

Speed is one of the great curses of modern civilization, obsession with speed leads to quantitative approach; we come to believe that more is better. This is very materialistic, we have to realize that it is the quality of life, quality of relationships, quality of food, medicine, education and everything else which matters.

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

The children are being conditioned to think that the purpose of life is to get a good job. You get paid but you don't get satisfaction from your work.

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.

The great work of social transformation begins with the first small step of stopping, calming, relaxing, reflecting and acting in a beneficial way.

The old story is a story of measurement. And the New Story is to bring measurement and meaning together. You cannot measure meaning.

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

The scientific world, the materialistic world, the world of commerce, the world of business, the world of individualism, the world of capitalism, world of communism - all these worlds are the old story now. Where we think we exploit nature, we exploit people. Market rules, profit rules, money rules. We work for name, fame, power, money, profit. That's the old story.

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.

Through yoga, meditation and other spiritual practices, we can learn the ways of personal equanimity. We can also learn how to use language in beneficial ways.

Wars and conflicts begin in the mind, then they are expressed in words and then executed through physical action, so personal transformation is intricately connected with the social and political transformation.

We are dependent on each other. Therefore, replenishing the soil, replenishing society and being part of one continuum - that's the new story.

We are not slaves of the market. Our human life has a greater meaning than making money, making profit, and working for the market or for multinational corporations.

We change by changing our consciousness and by saying, money should not be a commodity. Money should be a means to an end.

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

We have to shift our attitude of ownership of nature to relationship with nature. The moment you change from ownership to relationship, you create a sense of the sacred.

We human beings are spiritual beings. We have soul. We have spirit. We have mind. We have consciousness. We want fulfillment, we want happiness, we want satisfaction, we want joy. We want imagination. We want art, culture, music.

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.

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.

We need to develop a sense of sufficiency to be happy.

We need to learn to live in the here and now; this moment is the best moment. Live it fully.

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

When you come to the spiritual needs, the emotional needs, the needs of our inner life, then politics and business and technology are completely impotent. They are completely unable to meet and address the needs of human beings.

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

You have no skills in your hands. You have no education of understanding the meaning and the purpose and the compassion and the relationship. You have just a profession.

Your children are not your children. They are lives longing for itself. They come here with their own destiny. Give them your love. They will find their own way.