Earth Day is the first holy day...and is devoted to the harmony of nature... The celebration offends no historical calendar, yet it transcends them all.

It used to be when we said, ''til death do us part,' death parted us pretty soon. That's why marriages used to last forever. Everybody was dead.

Human beings do not carry civilization in their genes. All that we do carry in our genes are certain capacities- the capacity to learn to walk upright, to use our brains, to speak, to relate to our fellow men, to construct and use tools, to explore the universe, and to express that exploration in religion, in art, in science, in philosophy.

No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.

human beings seem to hold on more tenaciously to a cultural identity that is learned through suffering than to one that has been acquired through pleasure and delight.

Just as the difference in height between males is no longer a realistic issue, now that lawsuits have been substituted for hand-to-hand encounters, so the difference in strength between men and women is no longer worth elaboration in cultural institutions.

The most intractable problem today is not pollution or technology or war; but the lack of belief that the future is very much in the hands of the individual.