“The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the reverse.”

“If nonsatiety were the natural state of human nature then aggressive want-stimulating advertising would not be necessary, nor would the barrage of novelty aimed at promoting dissatisfaction with last year's model. The system attempts to remake people to fit its own presuppositions. If people's wants are not naturally insatiable we must make them so, in order to keep the system going.”

“Reproduction is more pleasurable than death.”

“Malthus has been buried many times, and Malthusian scarcity with him. But as Garrett Hardin remarked, anyone who has to be reburied so often cannot be entirely dead.”

“The problem with the World Bank has to do with development - the spreading of Western over-consumption worldwide.”

“While the invisible hand looks after the private sector, the invisible foot kicks the public sector to pieces.”

“There is something fundamentally wrong in treating the Earth as if it were a business in liquidation.”