I hear from readers a good deal, and I try to answer every letter. I think, because of my commitment to issues of conservation and good agriculture and peaceableness, they find something hopeful in my work.

I believe in thrift as I believe in freedom, but I don't support the plutocratic hostility to taxation, regulation, and protections of land, water, and air.

Soil is not usually lost in slabs or heaps of magnificent tonnage. It is lost a little at a time over millions of acres by the careless acts of millions of people. It cannot be saved by heroic feats of gigantic technology, but only by millions of small acts and restraints, conditioned by small fidelities, skills, and desires. Soil loss is ultimately a cultural problem; it will be corrected only by cultural solutions.

A teacher's major contribution may pop out anonymously in the life of some ex-student's grandchild. A teacher, finally, has nothing to go on but faith, a student nothing to offer in return but testimony.

The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.

It is impossible to prefigure the salvation of the world in the same language by which the world has been dismembered and defaced.

A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members - among them the need to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy. (pg. 63, "Racism and the Economy")