Whole Earth Quotes

“There were a lot of what seemed to Brand to be knee-jerk liberal ideas. One guy stood up and said, “Let’s give the money back to the Indians.” That prompted Jennings to go to the microphone and say, “I’m an Indian and I don’t want the money.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“A microphone was set up in the audience, the one-inch-thick envelope of hundred-dollar bills was handed to each speaker, and people started walking up to the mike, taking the envelope, stating what they thought should be done with the money, and then handing it to the next person.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“His marriage to Jennings was disintegrating. It seemed that the world was starting to close in, and he had become agoraphobic. In the end, he kept up appearances, putting out the last Catalog, but he had begun to contemplate suicide.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“Brand responded with a more upbeat version of the truth. “We wanted to stop something right for once,” he responded. “So many institutions sort of fade out and piddle out. It seemed like stopping it was more important than starting it.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“Telling someone they had to get to a particular place was ultimately much less effective than providing them the tools by which they might leapfrog from curiosity to curiosity until they got there—or somewhere else that was even better.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“The Catalog and the Truck Store became a vehicle for Brand to follow his whims and chase after any kind of new idea. He reviewed a build-your-own-airplane kit and found it interesting enough that he decided to order one. Ultimately, the plane, unfinished and unflown, ended up in the barn on Bill English’s property. Brand purchased a BMW motorcycle and discovered that as great an adventure tool as his new motorbike was, it was also probably more risk than it was worth. Thinking about the hazard of zipping along the freeway at seventy miles per hour, he decided to sell the bike after several misadventures.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“National recognition, however, meant more pressure and more work, and it quickly began to take a toll. In September, after just eleven months, Brand announced, “The CATALOG has but 20 months to live.” Then he added: “The function of the skyrocket is to get as high as possible before it blows.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“It was soon even clearer that they were riding a rocket ship. Brand had advanced the project about $25,000 from his family inheritance to produce the first Catalog. After selling out the first two thousand, they did ten thousand more in the spring, followed by a second run of twenty thousand. In July of 1969, the Catalog operation had its first profitable month, taking in almost $16,000 in income against $8,000 in expenses. For the Fall 1969 issue, they printed sixty thousand copies and had four thousand subscribers.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“The Last Whole Earth Catalog, published in 1971, would offer a vast menu of items sprawling over almost 500 pages.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“Although it was still more than seven years before the first hobbyist personal computer would appear, the Catalog was sprinkled with hints that the power of computing might be seized from corporations and the military.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“From the outset, while much of the counterculture rejected computing technology for being a central component of the bureaucratic mainstream world they dismissed, Brand embraced it.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“On the back cover, Brand added a final philosophical touch in large type: “We can’t put it together. It is together.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“Under “PURPOSE” the Catalog noted that government, big business, formal education, and the church had gone about as far as possible. Now a “realm of personal power” was ready to “find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“A Runaway World?, a book based on his lectures, begins: “Men have become like gods. Isn’t it about time that we understood our divinity?”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“(In a second printing of the first edition it was edited to read “get good at it. . . .”) The notion, he later acknowledged, was borrowed from Edmund Leach, the British social anthropologist who in 1967 had given a series of lectures focused on the interconnectedness of the world and humanity’s relationship to the environment”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“It was all tied together by Brand’s introductory sentence: “We are as gods and might as well get used to it.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“The new desktop publishing tools meshed perfectly with Brand’s editorial design for the Catalog. By purchasing an $850 halftone camera, he freed the Catalog from the world of print shops and graphic design houses completely. It made self-publishing not only possible but easy and adaptive in real time.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“When they began, desktop publishing did not exist, but for $150 a month, Brand leased an IBM Selectric Composer, an advanced version of the company’s workhorse electric typewriter that had been introduced in 1966. The composer was capable of producing camera-ready justified copy with proportional fonts and it opened the door to low-cost publishing. (The Fall 1969 Catalog cost only $33,000 to produce.)”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“Tcherepnin had a crucial qualification—she was a good typist. After a brief conversation, Brand told her the job was hers and invited her over to the Portola Institute for a celebratory round of nitrous oxide. She became the Whole Earth Catalog’s first employee.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“she knew who Brand was: one day walking across Harvard Square after class she had seen this odd fellow in a top hat, standing in the square with a billboard that read “Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“Clearly, he had gone over some physiological edge with nitrous oxide, so he abruptly stopped using it. Before he stopped, however, nitrous oxide—or perhaps the combination of the explosive growth of the Catalog, nitrous oxide, LSD, and a crumbling marriage—would push him into a deepening depression. It would be a significant factor in his decision to place an end date on the Catalog: 1971—in the fall of 1969, only a year after its first publication, just as it began its exponential growth.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“Brand was gradually moving away from LSD, but he still had a penchant for psychedelics. For a while an E tank of nitrous oxide, ordered weekly, was a permanent fixture at the Truck Store office. It was a convenient quick high, or “flash,” as Brand liked to think of it. It was kind of a workingman’s drug.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“Soon the decision was made not to carry advertisements. The philosophy was simple as was spelled out in the Catalog: “We don’t carry ads anymore, if you have a product, let us see it, if we like it, you don’t owe us anything.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“The Catalog itself was first announced to the world in May 1968 in a Portola Institute marketing brochure, offering $8 annual subscriptions covering two issues and two supplements, and setting the single-issue price at $5.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“The staff would grow to almost thirty by the time of the release of The Last Whole Earth Catalog in 1971.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“Years later Brand would adopt the mantra “Live small, so you can live large.” Indeed, when the Brands first arrived on Alpine Road in Menlo Park, they lived in a fifteen-foot-long box trailer that had little more than a bed and a tiny kitchen.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“One night in bed Jennings complained that Brand’s monologues were growing harsh and boring. She asked him to please “gentle up.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link, or WELL, a computer conferencing system that Brand launched in 1985.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“Both the Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Club, which gave rise to several dozen companies that forged the personal computer industry—including Apple—emerged from the fertile ground that Raymond created.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

“His romance with tools—the Catalog would be subtitled Access to Tools—came in part from his 1966 encounter with Fuller, who was legendary for claiming: “If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”
― John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand