"Property has always been the central consideration of the United States government, but it has become even more so over time. Between the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, to provide just one obvious, and in some ways, silly, example and the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1868, the inalienable right with which men are self-evidently endowed by their Creator, and which may not be abridged by the State, changed from "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness," to life, liberty, and property. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed during the KKK's maiden reign of terror, ostensibly to protect the rights of blacks from racist state governments, has been used far more often to protect the rights to property: Of the Fourteenth Amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court between 1890 and 1910, only nineteen dealt with the rights of blacks, while two hundred and eighty-eight dealt with the rights of corporations."

“We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means--all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity.”

“How, precisely, do you define a police state? Is it the number of police per capita? How about the number of prisons? Police use of machine guns or armored personnel carriers? The use of the police or the military to put down strikes, or to otherwise "keep the trains running on time," as was Mussolini's specialty? Perhaps it's the use of the police or the military to halt civil unrest. Or maybe the widespread use of curfews. Arbitrary confiscation of private property. How about this: could a police state be defined, as in Nazi Germany, by the use of force to segregate members of a specific race into concentration camps or prisons?”

“An interview with Derrick Jensen in NoCompromise.org”

“If we wish to stop the atrocities, we will need to understand and change the social and economic conditions that cause them.”

“I've never written this before in public, but my first thought on September 11 when I heard someone was attacking the World Trade Center is, 'Ah, so now it begins. Someone is finally fighting back. Given the terror that the United States routinely inflicts on people the world over , I'm surprised it didn't happen long ago. The poor have been very patient and long suffering, more patient and long suffering than anyone could ever expect.' That is what I thought.”

“Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it's not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default of our culture.”