In Kentucky, we're destroying mountains, including their soils and forests, in order to get at the coal. In other words, we're destroying a permanent value in order to get at an almost inconceivably transient value. That coal has a value only if and when it is burnt. And after it is burnt, it is a pollutant and a waste-a burden.

We are now, measurably, reducing the availability of these life-supporting goods which we can think of (though only on the conditions of good health and good care) as self-renewing or "sustainable." We are also destroying rapidly the supplies of the fossil fuels, which are limited and not renewable, and on which we have become totally dependent.

and in some of the people of the town and community surrounding it, one of the characteristic diseases of the twentieth century was making its way: the suspicion that they would be greatly improved if they were somewhere else.

We can make ourselves whole only by accepting our partiality, by living within our limits, by being humans not by trying to be gods.

Having hope is hard; harder when you get older.

I would like you to show me, if you can, where the line can be drawn between an organism and it's environment. The environment is in you. It's passing through you. You're breathing it in and out. You and every other creature.

It's impossible to contemplate the life of soil very long without seeing its analogy to the life of the spirit.