Freedom is not the capacity to do whatever we please; freedom is the capacity to make intelligent choices.

The good life is not about avoiding fear. Just the opposite.

Recent breakthroughs in science show we have just the capacities we need to face our planet's challenges. We're "soft-wired" for cooperation, empathy, fairness, along with a deep need to "make a dent," as social philosopher Erich Fromm put it. My hunch is that one reason depression is a global pandemic is that the dominant mental map denies so many of us expression of these deep needs and capacities.

Individuality doesn't just mean individualism-standing alone. It means developing one's unique gifts, and being able to share them for the enjoyment of oneself and others.

Hunger is a people-made phenomenon, so the central issue is power: the power of those who make the decisions about what is grown and who, or what, it's grown for.

I like to think of power back in its Latin root, its meaning comes from posse - to be able.

I think of Wangari Mathai in Kenya. If she started out saying she wanted to plant 20 million trees, she would have been laughed at. In fact, the foresters and the government did laugh at her. They said, "Villagers? Un-schooled villagers? Planting trees? No, no, no, it takes foresters." So she planted trees anyway.