Community

"Man is a gregarious animal. He's not supposed to live in isolation. He should actually live in a community, but a community does not necessarily have to be a city. There's all the evidence in the world that the building of cities is one of the worst mistakes that mankind has ever made: For both physical and mental health we've got to be close to Mother Earth."

Education

"[T]he center of...a community should be a school where everyone-not just the children could study the most enormously important subject of all: the philosophy of living. I think that philosophy, as it's taught in the academic world, is a completely meaningless discipline. Philosophy as a way of living, on the other hand, is just enormously important. Abraham Lincoln once said that the future of America depends upon teaching people how to make a good living from a small piece of land. Now this is the technology we must study . . . how to make a good living-not just a Spartan existence, but a good living-on a small piece of land."

"The church used to teach us how to live, but the church has lost its influence. Schools then stepped into the breach and-as I've said-now often deal in misinformation but, as a matter of fact, it's no longer the schools that teach the American people what they want. We now have an even more persuasive educational institution ramming the goods that factories produce down the throats of our people . . . and that educational institution is called advertising. Now very few individuals think of advertising as the real educator of the American populace, but, over and over again, it teaches us to want all sorts of things which are not good for us . . . but which make money for those who control the factories."

Happiness

"Happiness is dependent not on producing as much as possible but on producing as little as possible. Comfort and understanding are dependent upon producing only so much as is compatible with the enjoyment of the superior life. Producing more than this involves a waste of mankind's most precious possessions. It involves a waste of the only two things which man should really conserve--the two things which be should use with real intelligence and only for what really conduces to his comfort. When he destroys these two things, he has destroyed what is for all practical purposes irreplaceable. These two things are the natural resources of the earth and the time which he has to spend in the enjoyment of them."
--- This Ugly Civilization

Homesteading

"A modern homestead is a small plot of land on which the family lives and works to produce as much as possible of its food, clothing and shelter – the source and scene of creativity, security and freedom."
--- This Ugly Civilization

Leaders

"Leaders should consecrate themselves to the search for the realization of what is true, what is good and what is beautiful."

Machines:

“Many civilizations have been ugly. Ours is unique – it is a machine civilization. Yet machines are very old, having been used in the work of the world long before the industrial revolution. What the industrial revolution brought upon us was not the machine but the application of power to the machine. Power revolutionized the manner in which men used the machine. With power, modern man created the factory system. It was the factory use which constituted the abuse and misuse of the machine.”
--- This Ugly Civilization

World Problems

"Modern problems proliferate and remain unsolved because we spend so much time trying to deal with societal and world problems without first dealing with family and community problems. If we organized for normal families and communities - if these two groups provided the functions they are designed for - world problems would diminish and fade out in two or three generations."
--- Education and Living