Radio Free Vermont Quotes

“The snow was coming down so hard. It looked like the flakes were hurrying to get out of the sky so the next ones would have room to fall.”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“We all need to be reminded that democracy isn't just voting for the president every four years and then trusting him to fix things. Democracy is about getting together with your community to think together about your future.”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“when confronted by small men doing big and stupid things, we need to resist with all the creativity and wit we can muster, and if we can do so without losing the civility that makes life enjoyable, then so much the better.”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“Don't be so sure that your version of reality is better because it's newer.”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“Vermont breweries are symbols of everything that’s right and good about a free local economy, where neighbors make things for neighbors - and so they actually bother to give them some taste, body, and character.”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“But knowing that moose had returned to Vermont in his lifetime pleased him enormously. It was the idea that things repaired themselves, that if you backed off a little and didn’t ask too much of the world then it would meet you halfway.”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“I’ve sat behind a microphone and listened for decades as Americans learned to stop talking with each other and start shouting instead. No discussions, just ‘socialist’ or ‘fascist’ or ‘feminazi’ or ‘bigot’ or whatever. So here’s what I want to say, and I think it’s the one thing no one ever says any more in our public life: I think you’re wrong, but you may be right .”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“The great thing about America is, everyone has a chance to change it. Every person, every corporation, everyone is on an equal footing in this great land.”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“Before the day was out, Ben & Jerry’s had announced a new flavor: Trancicle, made only with Vermont milk and maple syrup, and “bullets” of dark chocolate.”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“They’re good at this. Don’t be so sure that your version of reality is better because it’s newer.”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“Don’t think ‘I can’t write an anthem’—think ‘The United States of America made it two centuries with a terrible anthem that no one can sing. I bet I can do better than that.”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“It made him feel old, as if he’d outlived the very climate of his life, and it made him feel mad, and it made him feel tired.”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“It never stopped seeming unlikely and magical to him, the way friction just quit, and gravity turned from adversary to ally.”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“Lincoln said that cultivating even ‘the smallest quantity’ of ground bred freedom and independence. ‘Ere long the most valuable of all arts, will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community whose every member possesses this art, can ever be the victim of oppression of any of its forms. Such community will be alike independent of crowned-kings, money-kings, and land-kings.”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“But knowing that moose had returned to Vermont in his lifetime pleased him enormously. It was the idea that things repaired themselves, that if you backed off a little and didn’t ask too much of the world then it would meet you halfway. This was one of the few corners of the planet that had gotten better in the last century, he thought—greener, healthier. The damage that too many sheep had done was wearing off. Or maybe you didn’t even need to think of it as damage. It had been good then, when Vermont was full of farmers, and it was good now, when Vermont was full of trees. Life ebbed and flowed, came and went. Goodness didn’t demand the one-way arrow toward Progress and More. It was, he thought, a blessing to have lived out his life in a place that spun slowly like that yellow leaf, an eddy in the American rapids, a place that was shrinking when most of the country was growing growing ever-growing. A place where—yow, a place where a grouse might fire up at any moment from right under your legs, scaring the wits out of you as it somehow flew off at top speed between the tangle of trunks and branches. A place where moss covered the back of a giant boulder, what the geologists delightfully called an “erratic” dropped in place when the last glaciers melted away. A place where the beech leaves still clung brown to the branches, shaking a little in the too-warm breeze.”
― Bill McKibben, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance