Vandana Shiva quotes

We are either going to have a future where women lead the way to make peace with the Earth or we are not going to have a human future at all. (Vandana Shiva)
Biopiracy (is) biological theft; illegal collection of indigenous plants by corporations who patent them for their own use. View quote
Vandana Shiva
In nature's economy the currency is not money, it is life. View quote
Vandana Shiva
If you are doing the right thing for the earth, she's giving you great company. View quote
Vandana Shiva
Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates. View quote
Vandana Shiva
When Bill Gates pours money into Africa for feeding the poor in Africa and preventing famine, he's pushing the failed Green Revolution, he's pushing chemicals, pushing GMOs, pushing patterns. View quote
Vandana Shiva
You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you. View quote
Vandana Shiva
Whenever we engage in consumption or production patterns which take more than we need, we are engaging in violence. View quote
Vandana Shiva
As usual, in every scheme that worsens the position of the poor, it is the poor who are invoked as beneficiaries. View quote
Vandana Shiva
Earth Democracy connects people in circles of care, cooperation, and compassion instead of dividing them through competition and conflict, fear and hatred. View quote
Vandana Shiva
Economic reforms based on the idea of limitless growth in a limited world, can only be maintained by the powerful grabbing the resources of the vulnerable. The resource grab that is essential for "growth” creates a culture of rape-the rape of the earth, of local self-reliant economies, and of women. (Vandana Shiva)
If you look at the graph of the growth of G. M. O. s, the growth of application of glyphosate and autism, it's literally a one-to-one correspondence. And you could make that graph for kidney failure, you could make that graph for diabetes, you could make that graph even for Alzheimer's. View quote
Vandana Shiva
Nuclear power started in weaponry. It was designed for war. And any instrument that has its origins in war always has the potential for war. First because the material you need to make bombs, you're multiplying it though nuclear power, you're taking uranium and turn it into plutonium. Second by equipping governments and private companies with this potential, in society you spread this potential, that here is a weapon of mass destruction available. This is exactly what happened with fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers came from explosive factories are increasingly used in terrorist attacks. View quote
Vandana Shiva
The gradual spread of sterility in seeding plants would result in a global catastrophe that could eventually wipe out higher life forms, including humans, from the planet. View quote
Vandana Shiva
Shiva's words are treated with earnest respect in liberal and environmental circles, where she is held in great esteem. If she insists that Monsanto and its GMO seeds have driven hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers to suicide-and she has said this frequently-then there must be something to it. View quote
Vandana Shiva
When you call somebody a fraud, that suggests the person knows she is lying. I don't think Vandana Shiva necessarily knows that. But she is blinded by her ideology and her political beliefs. That is why she is so effective and so dangerous. View quote
Vandana Shiva
I've had letters from Chinese scientists at the peak of the SARS epidemic who said the problem is a hybridization between the viruses planted into GMO feed, which is then fed to animals, then the virus jumped from the animals to humans. We're going to see more and more of these kinds of risks. I think the whole issue of the H1N1 virus was the fact that it had genes for three influenza types--human, chicken, pig. All of these crossings are becoming possible because of the crossing of genes across species barriers. View quote
Vandana Shiva
I believe Gandhi is the only person who knew about real democracy - not democracy as the right to go and buy what you want, but democracy as the responsibility to be accountable to everyone around you. View quote
Vandana Shiva
I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness, no matter how tough the situation. I believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that in itself creates new potential. View quote
Vandana Shiva
Gandhi is the other person. I believe Gandhi is the only person who knew about real democracy - not democracy as the right to go and buy what you want, but democracy as the responsibility to be accountable to everyone around you. Democracy begins with freedom from hunger, freedom from unemployment, freedom from fear, and freedom from hatred. To me, those are the real freedoms on the basis of which good human societies are based. View quote
Vandana Shiva
I have repeatedly stressed that the rape of the Earth and rape of women are intimately linked - both metaphorically, in shaping world-views, and materially, in shaping women's everyday lives. The deepening economic vulnerability of women makes them more vulnerable to all forms of violence, including sexual assault, as we found out during a series of public hearings on the impact of economic reforms on women organized by the National Commission on Women and the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology. (Vandana Shiva)
Just like Chief Seattle talked about being in the web of life, in India we talk about vasudhaiva kutumbkam, which means the earth family. Indian cosmology has never separated the human from the non-human-we are a continuum. View quote
Vandana Shiva
The WTO-related events in Seattle created the first experience of a rainbow politics-a successful pluralistic politics, without the working of a master mind, but with the currents and beauty that come out of free thinking. In the new politics, people have different ways of talking, but I feel the core will be living democracy and living economies, and that it will include both taking personal responsibility to make change and being part of national and international movements for change. View quote
Vandana Shiva
Instead of water belonging to millions of local communities, water too is to be controlled by five or six global water giants. These are recipes that use economic systems to appropriate for the few the base of survival of the majority. View quote
Vandana Shiva
The way out of this violent cycle is to deepen democracy-to bring decisions that directly affect people's lives as close as possible to where people are and to where they can take responsibility. View quote
Vandana Shiva