Fantastic Fungi Quotes

“What a beautiful inspirational model for how human beings might live: In a shared economy based not on greed but on nurturing relationships and mutual cooperation.”
― Paul Stamets, Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness, and Save the Planet

“Intact forest ecosystems, by comparison, provide more ecological services than just board feet of lumber. They clean the water, provide shade, and give communities plants, insects, and animals. Protecting our forests is essential not only for our survival now, but also for the survival of generations to come.”
― Paul Stamets, Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness, and Save the Planet

“If we needed more energy, we didn’t worry about perfect efficiency, which is fundamental to how nature works—it always uses the least to get the most done—we simply added more fuel. That worked really well for quite a long time until that energy inefficiency, along with a growing scarcity of materials, started creating some very negative consequences, multiplied today by billions of people.”
― Paul Stamets, Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness, and Save the Planet

“High-grade protein and the ability to make vitamin D are just two of a number of similarities humans share with the fungi kingdom”
― Eugenia Bone, Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness, and Save the Planet

“The more complex your biodiversity, the larger your cast of characters, the more opportunities for plants and other creatures to collaborate on providing maximum benefit to all. It’s like anything else: The larger your selection pool, the more likely your successes. True wealth is not measured in material possessions but by the abundance of options and choices.”
― Paul Stamets, Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness, and Save the Planet

“We’re still very much in kindergarten when it comes to understanding how to cocreate a sustainable future for all beings—and all beings are necessary to make that future possible.”
― Paul Stamets, Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness, and Save the Planet

“Humans indulge the idea that we are the highest species, the top of the food chain, and that the main purpose of the biosphere is to support us. But is this “highest species” worth protecting? This illusion of biological grandeur is the cause of our suffering because of the egocentricity it covers up.”
― Paul Stamets, Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness, and Save the Planet