Derrick Jensen Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Derrick Jensen's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Author Derrick Jensen's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 78 quotes on this page collected since December 19, 1960! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
All quotes by Derrick Jensen: Children Culture Giving Hope Lying Violence more...
  • When dams were erected on the Columbia, salmon battered themselves against the concrete, trying to return home. I expect no less from us. We too must hurl ourselves against and through the literal and metaphorical concrete that contains and constrains us, that keeps us from talking about what is most important to us, that keeps us from living the way our bones know we can, that bars us from our home. It only takes one person to bring down a dam.

    Derrick Jensen (2004). “A Language Older Than Words”, p.75, Chelsea Green Publishing
  • I thought that, given the system of rewards central to our economic system, in which profit maximization is valued above all else and specifically above life, it is probably just as irresistible to the owners of capital (human or otherwise) to exploit workers (and the land): "Nothing personal," they say as they load their property onto the ship bound for the Middle Passage, "but a man's gotta turn a dime."

    Derrick Jensen (2002). “The Culture of Make Believe”, p.102, Chelsea Green Publishing
  • For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.

    Derrick Jensen (2006). “Endgame”, p.404, Seven Stories Press
  • A language Older Than Words

    Derrick Jensen (2004). “A Language Older Than Words”, Chelsea Green Publishing
  • I wondered what it does to each of us to spend the majority of our waking hours doings things we'd rather not do, wishing we were outside or simply elsewhere, wishing we were reading, thinking, making love, fishing, sleeping, or simply having time to figure out who the hell we are and what the hell we're doing.

    Derrick Jensen (2004). “A Language Older Than Words”, p.109, Chelsea Green Publishing
  • It's no wonder we don't defend the land where we live. We don't live here. We live in television programs and movies and books and with celebrities and in heaven and by rules and laws and abstractions created by people far away and we live anywhere and everywhere except in our particular bodies on this particular land at this particular moment in these particular circumstances.

    Derrick Jensen (2011). “Endgame, Volume 2: Resistance”, p.242, Seven Stories Press
  • If we hope to stem the mass destruction that inevitably attends our economic system (and to alter the sense of entitlement - the sense of contempt, the hatred - on which it is based), fundamental historical, social, economic, and technological forces need to be pondered, understood, and redirected. Behavior won't change much without a fundamental change in consciousness. The question becomes: How do we change consciousness?

    Derrick Jensen (2004). “The Culture of Make Believe”, p.295, Chelsea Green Publishing
  • We cannot hope to create a sustainable culture with any but sustainable souls.

    Derrick Jensen (2006). “Endgame”, p.190, Seven Stories Press
  • Hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.

    Derrick Jensen (2011). “Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization”, p.295, Seven Stories Press
  • I think it's very important for us to start to build a culture of resistance, because what we're doing isn't working, clearly.

  • Within this culture wealth is measured by one's ability to consume and destroy.

    Derrick Jensen (2011). “Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization”, p.106, Seven Stories Press
  • But what, precisely, is hope? At a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned the question back on the audience, and here’s the definition we all came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.

    Derrick Jensen (2011). “Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization”, p.295, Seven Stories Press
  • Have you ever felt love? Did you need scientific proof of this? How would you have definitively and scientifically proved your love existed? If you could not prove it, would that mean your love didn't exist? What would you trust: your own feelings, or science?

    Derrick Jensen (2011). “Dreams”, p.386, Seven Stories Press
  • If we celebrate life with all its contradictions, embrace, experience, and ultimately live with it, a chance exists for a spiritual life filled not only with pain and untidiness, but also with joy, community, and creativity.

  • If we wish to stop the atrocities, we need merely to step away from the isolation. There is a whole world waiting for us, ready to welcome us home.

    Home  
    Derrick Jensen (2004). “A Language Older Than Words”, p.375, Chelsea Green Publishing
  • As is true for most people I know, I've always loved learning. As is also true for most people I know, I always hated school. Why is that?

    Derrick Jensen (2005). “Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution”, p.3, Chelsea Green Publishing
  • A culture that values production over life values the wrong things, because it will produce things at the expense of living beings, human or otherwise.

    Derrick Jensen (2000). “A Language Older Than Words”
  • Where will you drive your own picket stake? Where will you choose to make your stand? Give me a threshold, a specific point at which you will finally stop running, at which you will finally fight back.

    Derrick Jensen (2011). “Endgame, Volume 2: Resistance”, p.359, Seven Stories Press
  • The task we all face as human beings ... is to find and become who we are. The task teachers face is to find their own way of teaching, one that manifests who they are.

    Derrick Jensen (2005). “Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution”, p.144, Chelsea Green Publishing
  • To believe Christianity stands in opposition to slavery is at best to think anachronistically and at worst to not understand Christianity.

    Derrick Jensen (2002). “The Culture of Make Believe”
  • We have a need for enchantment that is as deep and devoted as our need for food and water.

    Derrick Jensen (2002). “The Culture of Make Believe”, p.537, Chelsea Green Publishing
  • Writing is really very easy. Tap a vein and bleed onto the page. Everything else is just technical.

    Derrick Jensen (2005). “Walking on Water: Reading, Writing and Revolution”, p.62, Chelsea Green Publishing
  • Violence, and evil, doesn't always come dressed in black, and it doesn't always look like Charles Manson. Nor does it always come to us as obvious and arrogant[...]. Often it comes to us with the simple plea to be reasonable.

  • To be clear, civilization is not the same as society. Civilization is a specific, hierarchical organization based on 'power over.' Dismantling civilization, taking down that power structure, does not mean the end of all social order. It should ultimately mean more justice, more local control, more democracy, and more human rights, not less.

    "Commonly Asked Questions". deepgreenresistancenewyork.org.
  • Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.

    "Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization". Book by Derrick Jensen, January 4, 2011.
  • I am only so beautiful as the character of my relationships, only so rich as I enrich those around me, only so alive as I enliven those I greet.

    Derrick Jensen (2004). “A Language Older Than Words”, p.127, Chelsea Green Publishing
  • In order to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves.

    Derrick Jensen (2006). “Endgame”, p.404, Seven Stories Press
  • Civilization can never be sustainable.

    Derrick Jensen (2005). “Walking on Water: Reading, Writing and Revolution”, p.105, Chelsea Green Publishing
  • When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to "hope" at all. We simply do the work.

    Derrick Jensen (2006). “Endgame”, p.330, Seven Stories Press
  • A very poor kid came up to me after a talk and said 'I want to go blow up a factory.' I asked how old he was and he said 17. I said 'have you ever had sex?' He said 'no.' I said 'just remember if you get caught you aren't going to have sex for twenty years at least.' That's not saying that one person having sex is worth the salmon. I'm not saying it's a reason not to act, I'm saying don't be stupid.

    The Word Magazine Interview, March/April 2005.
Page 1 of 3
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 78 quotes from the Author Derrick Jensen, starting from December 19, 1960! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
    Derrick Jensen quotes about: Children Culture Giving Hope Lying Violence