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Quotes by Jerry Brown

Farmers markets are green shoots coming out of the gun. They represent hope and they need to be cultivated. But we have a juggernaut coming at us.
– Jerry Brown
Genetic engineering companies want to create a situation where you have to get permission from a corporation to eat. And the corporate executives don't live in the community. They don't send their kids to the same school. They don't go to the same churches. They don't play in the same parks. They don't swim in the same pools. They don't go to the same movies.
– Jerry Brown
Government is the tool of the moneyed powers. That concentration of power is happening because Congress is bought off. The system is rigged. And anyone who because of some schoolbook imagery thinks we have some sort of a democratically elected government is not reading the signs of the times.
– Jerry Brown
I like computers. I like the Internet. It's a tool that can be used. But don't be misled into thinking that these technologies are anything other than aspects of a degenerate economic system.
– Jerry Brown
It looks to me to be obvious that the whole world cannot eat an American diet.
– Jerry Brown
It's a crazy society now. It's the richest society ever and yet people are overworked. There's more unemployment, more crime, more confusion, more broken marriages. This is a breakdown. Every culture breaks down. Every society breaks down, whether it's Rome, Spain, the British Empire. The people in charge probably didn't get it until they had their heads chopped off.
– Jerry Brown
Multinational corporations do control. They control the politicians. They control the media. They control the pattern of consumption, entertainment, thinking. They're destroying the planet and laying the foundation for violent outbursts and racial division.
– Jerry Brown
My philosophy was one of greater self reliance, a philosophy of decentralization, of more person-to-person contact. That's what I was espousing. That's what I still espouse.
– Jerry Brown
The farmers markets were another step to giving people an opportunity to take more power over their own lives-and also to provide another outlet for organic produce. That is important because the production and distribution of food is increasingly being monopolized and controlled by large corporate structures, large financial structures.
– Jerry Brown
The government is a bunch of whores. Look at the people who pay to elect the government. Small farmers or cooperative activists do not pay anything other than a microscopic speck of the money spent to elect Congress.
– Jerry Brown
The world is still the world according to the New York Times business section. It's all about mergers, the Dow. But there's a movement coming. And capitalism is definitely shaky now. It's shaky because it's based on insatiable desires in a biologically limited world.
– Jerry Brown
We have to deal with where we are. We have to create cooperatives, we have to create intentional communities, we have to work for local cooperation where we are.
– Jerry Brown
We were concerned that produce that did not meet the size standards of the marketing orders was being thrown away. At the same time there were elderly people who could not afford to have food. We wanted farmers to have an alternative outlet. The idea was to link up the farmer with the consumer through direct marketing.
– Jerry Brown
When the farmer can sell directly to the consumer, it is a more active process. There's more contact. The consumer can know, who am I buying this from? What's their name? Do they have a face? Is the food they are selling coming out of Mexico with pesticides?
– Jerry Brown
Where there is a sufficient social movement of self-reliant communities, there can be political change. There must be political change.
– Jerry Brown
We have to restore power to the family, to the neighborhood, and the community with a non-market principle, a principle of equality, of charity, of let's-take-care-of-one-another. That's the creative challenge.
– Jerry Brown
Jobs for every American is doomed to failure because of modern automation and production. We ought to recognize it and create an income-maintenance system so every single American has the dignity and the wherewithal for shelter, basic food, and medical care. I'm talking about welfare for all. Without it, you're going to have warfare for all.
– Jerry Brown
Automation and technology would be a great boon if it were creative, if there were more leisure, more opportunity to engage in raising a family, providing guidance to the young, all the stuff we say we need. America will work if we're all in it together. It'll work when there's a shared sense of destiny. It can be done!
– Jerry Brown