A Sustainable Agriculture does not deplete soils or people.

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 learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?

There are some things the arrogant mind does not see; it is blinded by its vision of what it desires.

It is to be broken. It is to be torn open. It is not to be reached and come to rest in ever. I turn against you, I break from you, I turn to you. We hurt, and are hurt, and have each other for healing. It is healing. It is never whole.

We have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist.

A liberal education rests on the assumption that nature and human nature do not change very much or very fast and that one therefore needs to understand the past.