Raj Patel quotes:

There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood ...in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs.

Agricultural sustainability doesn't depend on agritechnology. To believe it does is to put the emphasis on the wrong bit of 'agriculture.' What sustainability depends on isn't agri- so much as culture.

Generosity makes us happiest. We'll be happier people when we share, not when we impose, but when we learn from one another. Because when I'm connected to everyone I disappear... in being excellent you lose yourself. And when you're connected to everyone, that's the best thing that can happen.

A fertilizer bomb that kills hundreds in Oklahoma. Fuel-laden civil jets that kill 4000 in New York. A sanctions policy that kills one and a half million in Iraq. A trade policy that immiserates continents. You can make a bomb out of anything. The ones on paper hurt the most.

For every $1 advertisers spend advertising something healthful like apples, they spend $500 advertising junk food.

Far from being a "luxury for the rich," organic farming may turn out to be a necessity not just for the poor, but for everyone.

Food sovereignty... is most of all characterized by it's conversations around how to end hunger and poverty.

The opposite of consumption is not thrift - it is generosity.

The opposite of consumption isn't thrift. It's generosity.

The problem is that we are living now with the consequences of the others people mistake. It would be nice to make our own and learn from them. That is the art of democracy. That is the art of citizenship.