“And to take good care of it, we have to know it. And to know it and to be willing to take care of it, we have to love it.”

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

My belief is that the world and our life in it are conditional gifts.

I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever.

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

We’re all complicit in the things we may be trying to oppose. I’m complicit in the things that I’m trying to oppose.

For any sin, we all suffer. That is why our suffering is endless.

If conservationists will attempt to resume responsibility for their need to eat, they will be led back fairly directly to all their previous concerns for the welfare of nature.

An economy genuinely local and neighborly offers to localities a measure of security that they cannot derive from a national or a global economy controlled by people who, by principle, have no local commitment.

To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.

Whether we or our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

The only time I’ve been arrested was in opposing the Marble Hill nuclear power plant in Indiana. That was in 1979.

If we can’t afford to take good care of the land that feeds us, we’re in an insurmountable mess.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

The atmosphere, the earth, the water and the water cycle – those things are good gifts.

It means that your will and God’s will may not be the same. It means there’s a good possibility that you won’t get what you pray for. It means that in spite of your prayers you are going to suffer.

Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart.

But you know what? There’s far more pain involved in rolling over, far more pain in hiding.

I don’t know anything about baseball.

The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.

One does not know where love will take you.

I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.

We don’t know what’s around the corner – and we must do everything to ensure we get our country’s debts down, building our resilience so we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.

I wanted the people to know the truth about the Standard Oil Company.

Whether we or our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.