I learned this [ that fear doesn't have to stop me] when my world came apart. I was living a life-long dream of a family life combined with an organization to promote living democracy - all on a gorgeous 45-acre compound in rural Vermont. I'd spent a decade building my dream, and then it started to crumble, piece by piece - my marriage, my organization, my confidence.

[Fear] means that we are human beings walking into the unknown, and that we are risking breaking with others for something we believe in.

Our heavily meat-centered culture is at the very heart of our waste of the earth's productivity.

My children threw me a life line: "Return to your roots - food - and rewrite your first book, Diet for a Small Planet." I learned that if I could just show up, in this case, if I could just get myself out of bed, get to the computer in my tiny office at MIT, and start writing, help would start arriving.

What has dawned on me is that focusing on the "finite planet" frame sends a message that we have gone as far as Nature can take us and therefore we need to give power to forces outside Nature.

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

Beauty exists irrespective of financial circumstances.