# Quote — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

> We have constructed an artifice, a Potemkin village of an ecosystem where we perpetrate the illusion that the things we consume have just fallen off the back of Santa's sleigh, not been ripped from the earth. The illusion enables us to imagine that the only choices we have are between brands.

- Author: [Robin Wall Kimmerer](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer.md)
- Book: [Braiding Sweetgrass](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass.md)
- Page: 199
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robin_Wall_Kimmerer#Braiding_Sweetgrass_(2013)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass/we-have-constructed

## More from this book

> The world is more than your thoughtless commute. We, the collateral, are your wealth, your teachers, your security, your family. Your strange hunger for ease should not mean a death sentence for the rest of Creation.

p. 359 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass/the-world-is-more.md)

> It has been said that people of the modern world suffer a great sadness, a "species loneliness"—estrangement from the rest of Creation. We have built this isolation with our fear, with our arrogance, and with our homes brightly lit against the night.

p. 358 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass/it-has-been.md)

> Naturalists live in a world of wounds that only they can see.

p. 357 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass/naturalists-live-in-a-world.md)