“Ending feudalism, ending slavery, enacting labor laws, winning universal suffrage, ending Jim Crow laws, overcoming much of the mindset and practice of patriarchy as it was entrenched in the ‘50s and ‘60s, bringing gay rights and liberation into the light of social policy and practice. Putting ecology on the political map. The left has a long lineage.”

“Inasmuch as every judge some day ends up as a penitent, one had to travel the road in the opposite direction and practice the profession of penitent to be able to end up as a judge.”

“I am also very proud to be a liberal. Why is that so terrible these days? The liberals were liberatorsthey fought slavery, fought for women to have the right to vote, fought against Hitler, Stalin, fought to end segregation, fought to end apartheid. Liberals put an end to child labor and they gave us the five day work week! What's to be ashamed of?”

“Eating is an agricultural act,' as Wendell Berry famously said. It is also an ecological act, and a political act, too. Though much has been done to obscure this simple fact, how and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of the world - and what is to become of it. To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life can afford quite as much satisfaction. By comparison, the pleasures of eating industrially, which is to say eating in ignorance, are fleeting. Many people today seem erfectly content eating at the end of an industrial food chain, without a thought in the world; this book is probably not for them.”

“To feel absolutely right is the beginning of the end.”

“When a man has learned how to remain alone with his suffering, how to overcome his longing to flee, then he has little left to learn.”

“I play to win, whether during practice or a real game.”