“We instinctively feel an overwhelming desire to take sides: organic or conventional, fair or free trade, "pure" or genetically engineered food, wild or farm-raised fish. Like most things in life, though, the sensible answer lies somewhere between the extremes, somewhere in that dull but respectable placed called the pragmatic center. To be a centrist when it comes to food is, unfortunately, to be a radical.”

“...no matter how rhapsodic one waxes about the process of wresting edible plants and tamed animals from the sprawling vagaries of nature, there's a timeless, unwavering truth espoused by those who worked the land for ages: no matter how responsible agriculture is, it is essentially about achieving the lesser of evils. To work the land is to change the land, to shape it to benefit one species over another, and thus necessarily to tame what is wild. Our task should be to deliver our blows gently.”

“A preoccupation with power - black power, student power, flower power, poor power, 'the power structure' - is the striking aspect of the American political scene at the moment. Oddly enough, obsession with power goes hand in hand with a fear of power. Some of the New Left groups that talk the toughest about power are extremely reluctant to see power operate in any institutional form; within their own organizations, they shun 'hierarchies' and formally structured relations of authority. What the preoccupation with power reflects, essentially, is a deep=seated, pervasive feeling of powerlessness.”

“When we put things off until some future-probably mythical-Laterland, we drag the past into the future. The burden of yesterday's incompletions is a heavy load to carry. Don't carry it.”

“what would the masters do?when people arn’t successful, they sometimes wonder, why not? they get answers, then they wonder why those answers don’t seem to meet their needs. they get the wrong answers, and they get upset about it. perhaps they’re really getting the right answers, but answering the wrong questions.too many people ask nothing but “Why” questions.they analyze and analyse problems - but no solution. “you can analyse a glass of water and you’re left with a lot of chemical components, but nothing you can drink”.“Why?” questions can drive us crazy. “What?” questions drive us sane.What questions lead us to practical solutions.”

“And somewhere between his glassy infatuation for the one, and her growing fervor for the all, they'd found a shady place where two could huddle, grow, even feel nourished.”

“However close you can be to a vegan diet and further from the mean American diet, the better you are for the planet." quoted by Gidon Eshel (Bard College geographer)”