Susan George

“We're trying to run a 21st century society and economy with 19th century Darwinian, competitive, crude ideas.”

“Cost recovery is the polite way of saying, make families pay to educate their children.”

“I was recently looking at what they can actually do to reduce consumption of petrol. It would be quite possible to build automobiles out of carbon fibre that would be just as strong, weigh 10 times less and consume 10 times less petrol.”

“There are a lot of people who don't contribute anything to consumption and production.”

“This erosion of the middle class is happening all over the place. The opening of a wider gap between rich and poor is always accompanied by such a process.”

“As the rich consume more and more, they are clearly not going to want to downgrade their own status.”

“I think the market is always going to be around. The goal is not to say, let's get rid of the market, because the market does render a huge number of services, and I don't want to have a fight about the price of something every time I buy a book or a bottle of water.”

“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.”

“Markets can't think about anything beyond about three months. This is very long-term for markets, which is why the important things in life have got to be taken outside of the marketplace.”

“What is not fair now is that corporations pay less and less tax, which means that you and I pay more because we're rooted somewhere, they've got our address, right?”

“There is no degree of human suffering which in and of itself is going to bring about change. Only organisation can change things.”

“The World Development Movement, to take just one example, is doing good work. Some political parties are, too.”

“What you need if you want jobs are small and medium sized enterprises, local initiatives, labour intensive work, community development, service providers and the like.”

“Only around 2% of the earth's surface is cultivatable land.”

“I used to work a lot on food issues and every time somebody predicted that production would be inadequate they got egg on their face a year or two later.”

“Everything has to be done to build some sort of international democracy. We've seen only the tiniest beginnings of that.”

“It seems to be the thing now that young people are getting back into politics.”