Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call "the economy" or "the free market" is less and less distinguishable from warfare.

For complex reasons, our culture allows "economy" to mean only "money economy." It equates success and even goodness with monetary profit because it lacks any other standard of measurement. I am no economist, but I venture to suggest that one of the laws of such an economy is that a farmer is worth more dead than alive. A second law is that anything diseased is more profitable than anything that is healthy. What is wrong with us contributes more to the "gross national product" than what is right with us.

There’s nothing under the ground that’s worth more than the little layer of topsoil sitting on top of it.

The securest guarantee of the long-term good health of both farmland and city is, I believe, locally produced food.

All right, every day ain't going to be the best day of your life, don't worry about that. If you stick to it you hold the possibility open that you will have better days.

But the only possible guarantee of the future is responsible behavior in the present.

We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true.