Man's consciously lived fragility, individuality and relatedness make the experience of pain, of sickness and of death an integral part of his life. The ability to cope with this trio autonomously is fundamental to his health. As he becomes dependent on the management of his intimacy, he renounces his autonomy and his health must decline.

Only when we stop looking at male roles and forms of power as the norm and begin to look at female arrangements and perceive them as equally valid and significant - though perhaps different in form - can we see how male and female roles are intertwined, and begin to understand how human societies operate.

In the Middle Ages there was no salvation outside the Church, and the theologians had a hard time explaining what God did with those pagans who were visibly virtuous or saintly. Similarly, in contemporary society effort is not productive unless it is done at the behest of a boss, and economists have a hard time dealing with the obvious usefulness of people when they are outside the corporate control of a corporation, volunteer agency, or labour camp.

Our market-intensive societies measure material progress by the increase in the volume and variety of commodities produced. And taking our cue from this sector, we measure social progress by the distribution of access to these commodities. Economics has been developed as propaganda for the takeover by large-scale commodity producers.

Les enfants sont par définition des apprentis, et apprendre est l'activité humaine qui nécessite le moins de manipulation par autrui. La majeure partie de l'apprentissage n'est pas le resultat de l'instruction. Elle serait plutôt le résultat d'une participation dans un environnement chargé de sens.

The quality of a society and of its culture will depend on the status of its unemployed.

In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.

The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. The ecological balance cannot be re-established unless we recognize again that only persons have ends and only persons can work towards them.