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Robin Wall Kimmerer
218 quotes
“It is the fundamental unfairness of parenthood that if we do our jobs well, the deepest bond we are given will walk out the door with a wave over the shoulder. We get good training along the way. We learn to say "Have a great time, sweetie" while we are longing to pull them back to safety. And against all the evolutionary imperatives of protecting our gene pool, we give them car keys. And freedom. It's our job. And I wanted to be a good mother.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The presence of our reciprocal love is hard to say good-bye to.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We spill over into the world and the world spills over into us. The earth, that first among good mothers, gives us the gift that we cannot provide ourselves.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are showered every day with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come back.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sunrise ceremony is our way of sending gratitude into the world, to recognize all that we are given and to offer our choicest thanks in return. Many Native peoples across the world, despite myriad cultural differences, have this in common—we are rooted in cultures of gratitude.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While expressing gratitude seems innocent enough, it is a revolutionary idea. In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires. Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness, but the economy needs emptiness.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gratitude doesn’t send you out shopping to find satisfaction; it comes as a gift rather than a commodity, subverting the foundation of the whole economy. That's good medicine for land and people alike.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Leadership is rooted not in power and authority, but in service and wisdom.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cultures of gratitude must also be cultures of reciprocity. Each person, human or no, is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream's gift of pure water, then I am responsible for returning a gift in kind. An integral part of a human's education is to know those duties and how to perform them.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Duties and gifts are two sides of the same coin. Eagles were given the gift of far sight, so it is their duty to watch over us. Rain fulfills its duty as it falls, because it was given the gift of sustaining life. What is the duty of humans? If gifts and responsibilities are one, then asking "What is our responsibility?" is the same as asking "What is our gift?" It is said that only humans have the capacity for gratitude. This is among our gifts.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each person, human or no, is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream's gift of pure water, then I am responsible for returning a gift in kind. An integral part of a human's education is to know those duties and how to perform them.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Appreciation begets abundance.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How do we show our children our love? Each in our own way by a shower of gifts and a heavy rain of lessons.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I knew it with a certainty as warm and clear as the September sunshine. The land loves us back. She loves us with beans and tomatoes, with roasting ears and blackberries and birdsongs. By a shower of gifts and a heavy rain of lessons. She provides for us and teaches us to provide for ourselves. That's what good mothers do.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is really why I made my daughters learn to garden—so they would always have a mother to love them, long after I am gone.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ultimate reciprocity, loving and being loved in return.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wonder if much that ails our society stems from the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be cut off from that love of, and from, the land. It is medicine for broken land and empty hearts.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate—once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Plants tell their stories not by what they say, but by what they do.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Respect one another, support one another, bring your gift to the world and receive the gifts of others, and there will be enough for all.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world. Individuality is cherished and nurtured, because, in order for the whole to flourish, each of us has to be strong in who we are and carry our gifts with conviction, so they can be shared with others.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The truth of our relationship with the soil is written more clearly on the land than in any book.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is an honor to be the guardian of another species—an honor within each person's reach that we too often forget.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For me, writing is an act of reciprocity with the world; it is what I can give back in return for everything that has been given to me.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be heard, you must speak the language of the one you want to listen.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To me, an experiment is a kind of conversation with plants: I have a question for them, but since we don’t speak the same language, I can’t ask them directly and they won’t answer verbally. But plants can be eloquent in their physical responses and behaviors. Plants answer questions by the way they live, by their responses to change; you just need to learn how to ask.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Experiments are not about discovery but about listening and translating the knowledge of other beings.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A theory, to scientists, means something rather different from its popular use, which suggests something speculative or untested. A scientific theory is a cohesive body of knowledge, an explanation that is consistent among a range of cases and can allow you to predict what might happen in unknown situations.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Getting scientists to consider the validity of indigenous knowledge is like swimming upstream in cold, cold water. They’ve been so conditioned to be skeptical of even the hardest of hard data that bending their minds toward theories that are verified without the expected graphs or equations is tough. Couple that with the unblinking assumption that science has cornered the market on truth and there’s not much room for discussion.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are all the product of our worldviews—even scientists who claim pure objectivity.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science and traditional knowledge may ask different questions and speak different languages, but they may converge when both truly listen to the plants.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sustainable harvesting can be the way we treat a plant with respect, by respectfully receiving its gift.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reciprocity is a matter of keeping the gift in motion through self-perpetuating cycles of giving and receiving.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we allow traditions to die, relationships to fade, the land will suffer.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Through reciprocity the gift is replenished. All of our flourishing is mutual.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being a citizen does mean sharing in the support of your community.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most people are indifferent, unless their self-interest is at stake. Then there are the chronic complainers. [...] Fortunately, there are those in every organization, few but invaluable, who know their responsibilities and seem to thrive on meeting them. They get things done. These are the ones we all rely upon, the people who take care of the rest of us, quiet leaders.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If citizenship is a matter of shared beliefs, then I believe in the democracy of species. If citizenship means an oath of loyalty to a leader, then I choose the leader of the trees. If good citizens agree to uphold the laws of the nation, then I choose natural law, the law of reciprocity, of regeneration, of mutual flourishing.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you ask permission, you have to listen to the answer.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The need to resolve the inescapable tension between honoring life around us and taking it in order to live is part of being human.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are told to take only that which is given.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The taking of another life to support your own is far more significant when you recognize the beings who are harvested as persons, nonhuman persons vested with awareness, intelligence, spirit—and who have families waiting for them at home. Killing a who demands something different than killing an it. When you regard those nonhuman persons as kinfolk, another set of harvesting regulations extends beyond bag limits and legal seasons.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Imagination is one of our most powerful tools. What we imagine, we can become.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’ve heard it said that sometimes, in return for the gifts of the earth, gratitude is enough. It is our uniquely human gift to express thanks, because we have the awareness and the collective memory to remember that the world could well be otherwise, less generous than it is. But I think we are called to go beyond cultures of gratitude, to once again become cultures of reciprocity.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reciprocity helps resolve the moral tension of taking a life by giving in return something of value that sustains the ones who sustain us. One of our responsibilities as human people is to find ways to enter into reciprocity with the more-than-human world. We can do it through gratitude, through ceremony, through land stewardship, science, art, and in everyday acts of practical reverence.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The teachings tell us that a harvest is made honorable by what you give in return for what you take.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A harvest is made honorable when it sustains the giver as well as the taker.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What's good for the land is also good for the people.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We need acts of restoration, not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world. We need to restore honor to the way we live, so that when we walk through the world we don't have to avert our eyes with shame, so that we can hold our heads up high and receive the respectful acknowledgment of the rest of the earth's beings.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source