Paul Hawken Quotes

All through history, there have always been movements where business was not just about the accumulation of proceeds but also for the public good.

The natural capital is not income, but we spend our natural capital as if it were revenue, as if it were going to come back next year without any problems, whereas these renewals in nature can take hundreds of years.

Despite their good intentions, today's businesses are missing an opportunity to integrate social responsibility and day-to-day business objectives - to do good and make money simultaneously.

The old way of doing 'good business' was based on the principle, 'the ends justifies the means.' In the future, good business will invoke 'the means justifying the ends.' The E P&L can already serve as an important tool to help this shift in commerce from generating profits with collateral damages to profits with collateral benefits.

So there's always been this clash between what is the public good - that which belongs to all of us in common - and what can be exploited for a private interest.

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value.

I believe in 'business has a force for good.' You know, business has an impact on society. Of course, it creates jobs. It creates prosperity, but on the other hand, we also leave a negative footprint behind.

Australia is a resource-rich nation. We have been good at exploiting our minerals base and agricultural sector for exports.

The good Lord put oil and gas there for us to find and use, and we'd better do it.

To be interested in the public good we must be disinterested, that is, not interested in goods in which our personal selves are wrapped up.

We as governors, whether we're Republican or Democrat, we really believe that we know what's best for our people. And in Arizona, and particularly we're very interested about natural resources.

While I believe our Constitution allows for State and local governments to execute the power of eminent domain for those purposes that specifically serve the public good, condemning property solely to implement economic development plans is not serving the public good.

Look at your business and the activities that you undertake. Then, start to think about not just your economic concerns, but about social and environmental impacts that businesses have.

What would help us preserve our natural resources are genetic traits that let us sacrifice the present for the sake of the future. You need wisdom to sacrifice something that is immediately useful or advantageous for the sake of something that will be important in the future.

Business has a way of talking about how to create value, which is in some way isn't bad... We just need to start thinking about if the value we want to create is consistent with all social and environmental well being.

Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.

My public life is before you; and I know you will believe me when I say, that when I sit down in solitude to the labours of my profession, the only questions I ask myself are, What is right? What is just? What is for the public good?

We need what I have often called an ecological approach to the management of these resources and we do not have that now. We have the inertia of past habits, unsustainable habits.

The materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions.

Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.

To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.

The fruits [game and natural resources] may be easier tasted than believed.

Our performance should be based on the long-term health of the land, rather than the number of board feet produced.

The earth belongs in usufruct to the living.

Land is not something you inherit from your parents. It is something you borrow from your children.