Quotes from Satish Kumar

With slight risk of exaggeration you could say that he walked almost every mile of the Indian land.

Kennedy had been assassinated a month or so before. So we walked to the grave of John Kennedy and ended our walking symbolically at the Arlington National Cemetery.

We are not slaves of the market. Our human life has a greater meaning than making money, making profit, and working for the market or for multinational corporations.

Multinational corporations and a market economy have transformed human beings into instruments of making money. Human beings should be the end. And money should be the means to an end.

If happiness was in money or power, then America should be the happiest country in the world, but it is not.

We change by changing our consciousness and by saying, money should not be a commodity. Money should be a means to an end.

That was my childhood. I grew up with the monks, studying Sanskrit and meditating for hours in the morning and hours in the evening, and going once a day to beg for food.

In the lives of great men, neither did fate give up, NOR DID THEY.

We depend on the gifts of nature, but these gifts must be received with gratitude and not exploited or abused

Without the land, the rivers, the oceans, the forests, the sunshine, the minerals and thousands of natural resources we would have no economy whatsoever

What we call 'economic growth' is in fact a growth in waste and a decline in the health of natural habitat

If you can kill animals, the same attitude can kill human beings. The mentality is the same which exploits nature and which creates wars.

All the big problems of the world today are routed in the philosophy of separateness and dualism.

It became extremely important that we go and see the four heads of the governments, and the message was delivered, with the tea packets, to all these heads.

Happiness is possible only when we are kind to others and contented within.

Of course, we all need to have basic necessities met, such as good health care, good food, good education and good housing. But what is good? Having too much is bad, as having too little is also bad.

Monks will have three begging bowls for their food: one for water, one for liquid food, one for dry food.

We have to shift our attitude of ownership of nature to relationship with nature. The moment you change from ownership to relationship, you create a sense of the sacred.

Economy without ecology means managing the human nature relationship without knowing the delicate balance between humankind and the natural world

Our relationship with Nature... best way of forging this relationship... be a pilgrim and not a tourist on Planet Earth

You have no skills in your hands. You have no education of understanding the meaning and the purpose and the compassion and the relationship. You have just a profession.

I grew with it, and I used to go to see the monks, who had no possessions, even more extreme than my mother.

That was my real education in the world - I learned politics, the social and cultural life of India, Hindu tradition and religion, and Buddhism.

The way to healthy living is to shift from quantitative economic growth to quality of life, food, water and air - to shift from craving to contentment and from greed to gratitude