Michael Pollan Quotes

My relationship to plants becomes closer and closer. They make me quiet; I like to be in their company.

Find some plants, trees, etc., and communicate to them individually until you know they received your communication.

The final principle of natural farming is NO PESTICIDES. Nature is in perfect balance when left alone.

No one yet understands the mysterious intelligence within plants or the implications of the idea that nature communicates in a basic chemical language that is unconscious but profound. We do not yet understand how hallucinogens transform the message in the unconscious into revelations beheld by the conscious mind.

The snakes have their place in the agricultural economy of the village, but our villagers do not seem realize it.

The plants are the pipeline into the Gaian intention. It's just not a coincidence that these plants carry this immense spiritual message. They are the pipeline of Gaian intentionality.

Since I turned the fields back to their natural state, I can't say I've had any really difficult problems with insects or disease.

Plants do everything animals do, but slowly. They migrate, communicate, deceive, stalk their food and, with an ostentation of styles and perfumes to put the animal kingdom to shame, they make love. It's just that catching them in flagrante delicto might require time-lapse photography.

A weed is a plant whose virtue is not yet known.

People were so naive about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction---and defense.

Far from being a “luxury for the rich,” organic farming may turn out to be a necessity not just for the poor, but for everyone.

The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them.

It seems an easy choice - sacrifice the tree for a human life - until one learns that three trees must be destroyed for each patient treated. Suddenly we must confront some tough questions. How important are the medical needs of future generations?

Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.

We've been spending this kind of ramp up time from the time we started the company to now with a lot of different projects in development. What we aren't doing is saying, "We have to do this, this and this." Because the "this, this and this" might not be ready and you don't want to go and make something that's not ready.

Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation.

Next to the Bible, nature is to be our great lesson book.

Don't mess up the environment until you're quite sure what you're doing.

When we look deeply into the heart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth, and everything else in the cosmos in it. Without clouds there could be no rain, and without rain there would be no flower.

The German landscape is something unique that we cannot disturb and have no right to destroy. The more densely populated our 'living space' becomes with settlements, the greater our hunger will grow for unspoilt nature. The ever increasing spiritual damage caused by life within the big city will make this hunger practically uncontrollable... when we build here on this the landscape of our homeland we must be clear that we will protect its beauty; and in places where this beauty has already disappeared, we will reconstruct it.

Allow not nature more than nature needs.

Every life lesson that trickled its way into my being came from a mutually respectful relationship between the environment and my family. We were raised to appreciate the teachings of animals and the untouched magnificence of raw natural beauty. This understanding of our precious and complex ecosystem has carried me throughout every chapter of my life and is a significant column of my identity.

We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources ... But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil and the gas are exhausted.

Today the great gift of God's Creation is exposed to serious dangers and lifestyles which can degrade it. Environmental pollution is making particularly unsustainable the lives of the poor of the world ... we must pledge ourselves to take care of creation and to share its resources in solidarity.