A typical guy who buys organic food doesn't really buy it in order to be healthy; he buys it to regain a kind of solidarity as the one who really cares about nature. He buys a certain ideological stance.

The fact that a cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland—a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on the Earth—can bring to a standstill the aerial traffic over an entire continent is a reminder of how, with all its power to transform nature, humankind remains just another species on the planet Earth.

Probably never in human history did we live in a society in which, at the microlevel of personal behavior, our lives were so strongly regulated.

There is a contradiction between market liberalism and political liberalism. The market liberals (e.g., social conservatives) of today want family values, less government, and maintain the traditions of society (at least in America's case). However, we must face the cultural contradiction of capitalism: the progress of capitalism, which necessitates a consumer culture, undermines the values which render capitalism possible

Words are never 'only words'; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.

Fascism is relatively easy to explain. It is a reactionary phenomenon. Nazism was some bad guys having some bad ideas and unfortunately succeeding in realizing them.

Undoubtedly [Beethoven's] music often verges on kitsch