"We're living at a dangerous moment because... 'empire', is in its last gasp, and empire, when it's in its last gasp will do anything to sustain itself... The US does not want to see the indigenous view of water, or natural gas, or oil, or resources in the ground to prevail... I was in a meeting of U'wa people who are fighting oil development in Colombia... and [the way] they talk about oil... [is] completely alien to the western development and corporate development model-- it just can't be understood even. So as a result, corporations, and US and prevailing western powers, don't think anything negative at all about going in and overpowering that if they can get away with it."
--Jerry Mander Author of 'Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World Is Possible'
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"...These 'rich' claim they own land, and the 'poor' are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper... ...Those in power rule by force [violence], and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist."
-- Derrick Jensen Author of 'Engame'
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"Anarchism [anarchy] is participatory... it's based on the assumption that any authoritarian or any structure of authority and domination has to justify itself-- none of them are self-justifying-- whether they're in individual relations, or international affairs or the workplace or whatever... They have a burden of proof to bear, and if they can't bear that burden-- which they usually can't-- they're illegitimate and should be dismantled and replaced by alternative structures which are free and participatory and are not based on authoritarian systems..."
- Noam Chomsky
"At the end I think states ought to dissolve, because I think they're illegitimate structures ...As long as people... are able to free themselves from the doctrinal controls imposed on them by their 'self- appointed' 'betters' and 'mentors'... they'll continue to be able to struggle for peace and justice and freedom and limitations on violence and constraints on power, as they've been doing for hundreds of years... The immediate problem is to free ourselves from the shackles imposed very consciously by the kind of people [in power]... who don't want the facts to be known-- and for very good reasons-- because if people know the facts, they're not going to tolerate them."
- Noam Chomsky Author of 'Manufacturing Consent'
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"There is a response within the landscape against damaging things. I don't know how it works against one of these coal machines that chew up the Earth, but it probably has a long-term response... So, you don't push something without it sort of pushes back. We are into all this mechanical physics, which says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. But the Chinese say, 'No, that's not true.' If you kick a living system, it kicks back harder. Its reaction is often unfairly oppressive. You might simply push someone out the door. That person re-enters with a pitch fork, not just pushing back in, but ready to poke holes in you."
- Bill Mollison, (1981) "Father" of Permaculture
"All political systems that I know of, and most kings, have moved their whole nation to desert. And the things that we saw as most proud-- the cities and the canals and irrigation and so on-- are the things that killed their cultures. And it continues, unabated. If people don't seize power back, and make their own gardens, and sit in their own gardens of Eden, then we're all doomed, and the whole world ends in dust."
- Bill Mollison