Paul Hawken

“When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”
― Paul Hawken

“The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn't make sense to be hopeful.”
― Paul Hawken

“The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them.”
― Paul Hawken

“Always leave enough time in your life to do something that makes you happy.”
― Paul Hawken

“Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.”
― Paul Hawken

“Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.”
― Paul Hawken