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Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan Quotes

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Famous Michael Pollan Quotes

“When we mistake what we can know for all there is to know, a healthy appreciation of one's ignorance in the face of a mystery like soil fertility gives way to the hubris that we can treat nature as a machine. Once that leap has been made, one input follows another, so that when the synthetic nitrogen fed to plants makes them more attractive to insects and vulnerable to disease, as we have discovered, the farmer turns to chemical pesticides to fix his broken machine.”

KnowsWayGivingHas BeensMadeFacesTurnsMistakeMysteryLandIgnoranceBrokenHealthyDiseaseMachinesTreatsPlantAppreciationVulnerableAttractiveSoilFedsLeapChemicalsFarmersInsectsInputHubrisFertilitySyntheticPesticidesNitrogen
Author:Michael Pollan
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“Corn is the hero of its own story, and though we humans played a crucial supporting role in its rise to world domination, it would be wrong to suggest we have been calling the shots, or acting always in our own best interests. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that corn has succeeded in domesticating us.”

WorldBelieveHumansHas BeensReasonStoriesWould BeInterestActingRolesHeroCallingShotsPlantCrucialDominationCornWorld DominationSupporting RolesCalling The Shots
Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World
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“Ecology also teaches that all life on earth can be viewed as a competition among species for the solar energy captured by green plants and stored in the form of complex carbon molecules. A food chain is a system for passing those calories on to species that lack the pant's unique ability to synthesize them from sunlight.”

EarthFormEnergyAbilityTeachUniqueGreenCompetitionPlantSpeciesComplexesPassingPassingsChainsSunlightEcologyCarbonCapturedMoleculesCaloriesFood ChainSolar EnergyGreen Plants
Author:Michael Pollan
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“Our ingenuity in feeding ourselves is prodigious, but at various points our technologies come into conflict with nature's ways of doing things, as when we seek to maximize efficiency by planting crops or raising animals in vast mono-cultures. This is something nature never does, always and for good reasons practicing diversity instead. A great many of the health and environmental problems created by our food system owe to our attempts to oversimplify nature's complexities, at both the growing and the eating ends of our food chain.”

WayDoeEndsReasonProblemCultureAnimalTechnologyGrowingConflictDiversityEatingPlantEnvironmentalVariousChainsComplexityGreat MenEfficiencyFeedingCropsIngenuityFood ChainProdigiousEnvironmental ProblemsMono
Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World
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“Wrangham cites several studies indicating that in fact humans don't do well on raw food: they can't maintain their body weight, and half of the women on a raw-food regimen stop menstruating. Devotees of raw food rely heavily on juicers and blenders, because otherwise they would have to spend as much time chewing as the chimps do. It is difficult, if not impossible, to extract sufficient energy from unprocessed plant matter to power a body with such a big, hungry brain.”

IfsHumansWellsMatterFactsBodyBigsEnergyDifficultBrainHalfStudyImpossibleWeightPlantHungrySufficientRelyChewingDevoteeCitingRaw FoodBlendersBody Weight
Book:Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
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“The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWorldWayNeedsTryingLongStillsCommunityTeachSunPlansPlanetsLessonsGardenShiningPlantBotherZeroGardeningOur RelationshipInspirational GardeningPlanting A GardenGreat Garden
Author:Michael Pollan
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“Another thing cooking is, or can be, is a way to honor the things we're eating, the animals and plants and fungi that have been sacrificed to gratify our needs and desires, as well as the places and the people that produced them. Cooks have their ways of saying grace too... Cooking something thoughtfully is a way to celebrate both that species and our relation to it.”

PeopleWayNeedsWellsHas BeensDesireAnimalGraceHonorEatingRelationCookingPlantSpeciesCelebrateCooksFungi
Author:Michael Pollan
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“Ripe vegetables were magic to me. Unharvested, the garden bristled with possibility. I would quicken at the sight of a ripe tomato, sounding its redness from deep amidst the undifferentiated green. To lift a bean plant's hood of heartshaped leaves and discover a clutch of long slender pods handing underneath could make me catch my breath.”

LongMagicPossibilityGardenSightBreathsGreenPlantLiftsVegetablesBeansRipeHoodTomatoesClutchSlender
Book:Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
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“Originally, the atoms of carbon from which we're made were floating in the air, part of a carbon dioxide molecule. The only way to recruit these carbon atoms for the molecules necessary to support life-the carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, and lipids-is by means of photosynthesis. Using sunlight as a catalyst the green cells of plants combine carbon atoms taken from the air with water and elements drawn from the soil to form the simple organic compounds that stand at the base of every food chain. It is more than a figure of speech to say that plants create life out of thin air.”

WayMeanMadeFormWaterSimpleSupportTakenAirFiguresSpeechElementsGreenPlantChainsCellsSoilAtomsSunlightCarbonFloatingAcidCompoundsMoleculesProteinCatalystCarbon DioxideRecruitOrigin Of LifeFood ChainThin AirCarbohydratesAmino AcidsFigures Of SpeechPhotosynthesisOrganic Compounds
Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World
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