Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.

Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.

A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.

Fundamentalists are panicked by the apparent disintegration of the family, the disappearance of certainty and the decay of morality. Fear leads them to ask, if we cannot trust the Bible, what can we trust?

But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.

Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.

The only thing we can really count on in this uncertain world is human unreliability itself.