102 quotes
“There’s nothing under the ground that’s worth more than the little layer of topsoil sitting on top of it.”
In a totalitarian economy, any "political liberties" that the people might retain would simply cease to matter.
Another Turn of the Crank (1996)
And if people lose their ability to feed themselves, how can they be said to be free?
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993)
The poem is important, but
not more than the people
whose survival it serves...
The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all.
The Unsettling of America (1977)
The disease of the modern character is specialization.
We haven't accepted — we can't really believe — that the most characteristic product of our age of scientific miracles is junk, but that is so.
The Long-Legged House (1969)
There is an uncanny resemblance between our behavior toward each other and our behavior toward the earth.
The Unsettling of America (1977)
Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come.
What Are People For? (1990)
In making myself a killer I have destroyed the possibility of neighborhood.
The Long-Legged House (1969)
The citizen thus becomes an economic subject.
Another Turn of the Crank (1996)
A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives.
The Long-Legged House (1969)
We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers?
A mind that has confronted ruin for years
Is half or more a ruined mind.
Given (2005)
I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love.
Another Turn of the Crank (1996)
Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment.
What Are People For? (1990)
You don't need a large corporation to process local food or local timber and market it locally.
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
We need to confront honestly the issue of scale.
To farm is to be placed absolutely.
The Way of Ignorance (2005)