What politician ever thinks beyond 4 or 5 years? But such thinking is hopelessly inadequate for the big questions that involve the fabric of the world we live in

Never mind, love, it's not the end of the world.

We can only truly be civilised people when we have regular and meaningful contact with the wild world

Humans lived for several million years as fully wild beings: only in the last 10, 000 did we invent agriculture; only in the last couple of centuries did we invent industry. We are a species that has spent 99 per cent of its history as hunter-gatherers. We haven't had time for our unconscious minds and our unconscious needs to have changed. If you like, our souls have not changed, and this is true whether or not we believe that we have them.

The comfort zone is always the most desirable place to be. But in settling for comfort, there is a price to pay and it comes in the death of ambition, of hope, of youth and the death of self.

A living countryside is not a luxury but a necessity for the human population; if you let conservation go hang until your pockets are jingling there will be a lot less to conserve

The traditional dress of the Australian cricketer is the baggy green cap on the head and the chip on the shoulder. Both are ritualistically assumed