James Howard Kunstler Quotes

American - Author | October 19, 1948 -

I do all I can to maintain good health. I eat mostly plants, as Michael Pollan would say. I get a lot of exercise. I lead a purposeful daily life. I stay current with the dentist. I made the formative decision of where to live over thirty years ago when I settled in a 'main street' small town in upstate New York.

James Howard Kunstler

LifeGoodLiveGood HealthDaily

Our twenty-first century economy may focus on agriculture, not information.

James Howard Kunstler

FocusInformationAgricultureEconomy

The newspaper headlines may shout about global warming, extinctions of living species, the devastation of rain forests, and other worldwide catastrophes, but Americans evince a striking complacency when it comes to their everyday environment and the growing calamity that it represents.

James Howard Kunstler

RainComplacencyEnvironmentLiving

Ever-busy, ever-building, ever-in-motion, ever-throwing-out the old for the new, we have hardly paused to think about what we are so busy building, and what we have thrown away. Meanwhile, the everyday landscape becomes more nightmarish and unmanageable each year.

James Howard Kunstler

BuildingBusyThinkLandscapeYear

Everything we do these days - our lust for ever more comfort, pleasure, and distraction, our refusal to engage with the mandates of reality, our fidelity to cults of technology and limitless growth, our narcissistic national exceptionalism - all of this propels us toward the realm where souls abandon all hope.

James Howard Kunstler

GrowthTechnologyHopeRealityLust

As a long-time registered Democrat who started voting in the year of Watergate, I resent being taken for a ride to the place where anything goes and nothing matters. And especially where nothing matters less than clear thinking and straight talk.

James Howard Kunstler

RideThinkingVotingYearPlace

The earth is a fickle place for all life, not least the human project of civilization.

James Howard Kunstler

LifePlaceEarthCivilizationHuman

The human race needs a time out from all this techno-magic-mischief, a period to reflect on what we've done and how we ought to behave with this stuff.

James Howard Kunstler

TimeDoneRaceHumanReflectOut

History is moving the furniture around in the house of mankind just about everywhere but the U.S.A. Things have changed, except here, where people come and go through the rooms of state, and everything looks shabbier by the day, and lethargy eats away at the upholstery like an acid fog, and the walls reverberate with meaningless oratory.

James Howard Kunstler

HistoryDayWallsPeopleFogMoving

The model of the human habitat dictated by zoning is a formless, soul-less, centerless, demoralizing mess. It bankrupts families and townships. It disables whole classes of decent, normal citizens. It ruins the air we breathe. It corrupts and deadens our spirit.

James Howard Kunstler

SpiritBreatheHumanAirMessWhole

I'm very optimistic about the future. I'm just not optimistic about the skyscraper as a building typology that is suited for the future.

James Howard Kunstler

FutureBuildingJustSkyscraperVery

Ahead now, I think you'll see the big nations shrink back into their own corners of the world. I'm not saying we'll see no international trade, but it will be nothing like the conveyer belt from China to Wal-Mart that we've known the last few decades. And the prospects for conflict are very, very high.

James Howard Kunstler

ConflictWorldSayingThinkYouNow

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