Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organised political resistance

I thought a forest was made up entirely of trees, but now I know that the foundation lies below ground, in the fungi.

We must learn how to think like the planet.

A culture that values production over life values the wrong things, because it will produce things at the expense of living beings, human or otherwise.

If your homeland were invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?

For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.

I am only so beautiful as the character of my relationships, only so rich as I enrich those around me, only so alive as I enliven those I greet.

We have been too kind to those who are killing the planet. We have been inexcusably, unforgivably, insanely kind.

No matter what we call it, poison is still poison, death is still death, and industrial civilization is still causing the greatest mass extinction in the history of the planet.

Within this culture wealth is measured by one's ability to consume and destroy.

Hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.

Faith to challenge equals recovery. When you learn to challenge your situation God speaks.

To live [in the church] at the beck and call of marketing logic is to live in slavery.

Denn die Todten reiten Schnell. (For the dead travel fast.)

In any situation, location is crucial.

I'm most interested in that moment when my entire perspective changes, and I have to reconsider everything.

A man's character never changes radically from youth to old age. What happens is that circumstances bring out characteristics which have not been obvious to the superficial observer.

Any woodthrush shows it - he sings, not to fill the world, but because he is filled.

I didn't realise how important stupid people are in your life, because you ask yourself, what made stupid people so stupid? What made them the way they are?

Cambridge is heaven, I am convinced it is the nicest place in the world to live. As you walk round, most people look incredibly bright, as if they are probably off to win a Nobel prize.

Great men, even during their lifetime, are usually known to the public only through a fictitious personality.