Development does not start with goods; it starts with people and their education, organization, and discipline. Without these three, all resources remain latent, untapped, potential.

We think work with the brain is more worthy than work with the hands. Nobody who thinks with his hands could ever fall for this.

Economic policies absorb almost the entire attention of government, and at the same time become ever more impotent. The simplest things, which only fifty years ago one could do without difficulty, cannot get done any more. The richer a society, the more impossible it become to do worthwhile things without immediate payoff.

We must do what we conceive to be the right thing, and not bother our heads or burden our souls with whether we are going to be successful. Because if we don't do the right thing, we'll be doing the wrong thing, and we will just be part of the disease, and not a part of the cure.

Our task - and the task of all education - is to understand the present world, the world in which we live and make our choices.

Modern man talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side

Much of the economic decay of southeast Asia (as of many other parts of the world) is undoubtedly due to a heedless and shameful neglect of trees.