"Those in power have made it so we have to pay simply to exist on the planet. We have to pay for a place to sleep, and we have to pay for food. If we don't, people with guns come and force us to pay. That's violent."
— Derrick Jensen (Endgame: Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization)

"Grades are a problem. On the most general level, they're an explicit acknowledgment that what you're doing is insufficiently interesting or rewarding for you to do it on your own. Nobody ever gave you a grade for learning how to play, how to ride a bicycle, or how to kiss. One of the best ways to destroy love for any of these activities would be through the use of grades, and the coercion and judgment they represent. Grades are a cudgel to bludgeon the unwilling into doing what they don't want to do, an important instrument in inculcating children into a lifelong subservience to whatever authority happens to be thrust over them."
— Derrick Jensen

"Within this culture wealth is measured by one's ability to consume and destroy."
— Derrick Jensen (Endgame: Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization)

"To pretend that civilization can exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation."
— Derrick Jensen (Endgame: Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization)

"Surely by now there can be few here who still believe the purpose of government is to protect us from the destructive activities of corporations. At last most of us must understand that the opposite is true: that the primary purpose of government is to protect those who run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens.""
— Derrick Jensen (Endgame: Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization)

"Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system."
— Derrick Jensen (Endgame: Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization)

"What if the point of life has nothing to do with the creation of an ever-expanding region of control? What if the point is not to keep at bay all those people, beings, objects and emotions that we so needlessly fear? What if the point instead is to let go of that control? What if the point of life, the primary reason for existence, is to lie naked with your lover in a shady grove of trees? What if the point is to taste each other's sweat and feel the delicate pressure of finger on chest, thigh on thigh, lip on cheek? What if the point is to stop, then, in your slow movements together, and listen to the birdsong, to watch the dragonflies hover, to look at your lover's face, then up at the undersides of leaves moving together in the breeze? What if the point is to invite these others into your movement, to bring trees, wind, grass, dragonflies into your family and in so doing abandon any attempt to control them? What if the point all along has been to get along, to relate, to experience things on their own terms? What if the point is to feel joy when joyous, love when loving, anger when angry, thoughtful when full of thought? What if the point from the beginning has been to simply be?"
— Derrick Jensen (A Language Older Than Words)

"In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
— George Orwell

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
— George Orwell (Animal Farm)

"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."
— George Orwell (1984)

"Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'."
— George Orwell

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
— George Orwell

"So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult."
— George Orwell (1984)

"As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me."
— George Orwell