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Wendell Berry

94 quotes

“I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Peace of Wild Things" in Green River Review, No. 1 (1968)
“Today, local economies are being destroyed by the "pluralistic," displaced, global economy, which has no respect for what works in a locality. The global economy is built on the principle that one place can be exploited, even destroyed, for the sake of another place.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in New Perspectives Quarterly (1992), quoted in his Profile at The Poetry Foundation
“Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm — which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Unsettling of America : Culture & Agriculture (1996), p. 62
“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Part of an endorsement statement for The Dying of the Trees (1997) by Charles E. Little
“The line that connects the bombing of civilian populations to the mountain removed by strip mining … to the tortured prisoner seems to run pretty straight. We're living, it seems, in the culmination of a long warfare — warfare against human beings, other creatures and the Earth itself.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Commencement address at Lindsey Wilson College (14 May 2005)
“We need to confront honestly the issue of scale. Bigness has a charm and a drama that are seductive, especially to politicians and financiers; but bigness promotes greed, indifference, and damage, and often bigness is not necessary. You may need a large corporation to run an airline or to manufacture cars, but you don't need a large corporation to raise a chicken or a hog. You don't need a large corporation to process local food or local timber and market it locally.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s nothing under the ground that’s worth more than the little layer of topsoil sitting on top of it.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Comment at City Arts & Lecture Series, Herbst Theater, San Francisco, CA; 29 October 2012
“I'm not a Baptist in any formal way. I go to the Baptist church, where my wife plays the piano, on days of bad weather. On days of good weather, I ramble off into the woods somewhere. I am a person who takes the Gospel seriously, but I have had trouble conforming my thoughts to a denomination.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Brian Lehrer Show (17 October 2013)
“When the possessions and households of citizens are no longer honored by the acts, as well as the principles, of their government, then the concentration camp ceases to be one of the possibilities of human nature and becomes one of its likelihoods.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Landscaping of Hell : Strip-Mine Morality" (1965)
“The rule, acknowledged or not, seems to be that if we have great power we must use it. We would use a steam shovel to pick up a dime. We have experts who can prove there is no other way to do it.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wars have never made peace or preserved it or fostered its ideals. To have peace you must make peace with your enemy. To make peace only with your friends is to avoid the issue, and to permit a great principle to become absurd. Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I solve my dispute with my neighbor by killing him, I have certainly solved the immediate dispute. If my neighbor was a scoundrel, then the world is no doubt better for his absence. But in killing my neighbor, though he may have been a terrible man who did not deserve to live, I have made myself a killer — and the life of my next neighbor is in greater peril than the life of the last. In making myself a killer I have destroyed the possibility of neighborhood.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We haven't accepted — we can't really believe — that the most characteristic product of our age of scientific miracles is junk, but that is so. And we still think and behave as though we face an unspoiled continent, with thousands of acres of living space for every man. We still sing "America the Beautiful" as though we had not created in it, by strenuous effort, at great expense, and with dauntless self-praise, an unprecedented ugliness.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. ... We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. . . We must recover the sense of the majesty of the creation and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Individualism is going around these days in uniform, handing out the party line on individualism.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our model citizen is a sophisticate who before puberty understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An art that heals and protects its subject is a geography of scars.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The more local and settled a culture, the better it stays put, the less the damage. It is the foreigner whose road of excess leads to a desert … a man with a machine and inadequate culture … is a pestilence. He shakes more than he can hold.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Novelty is a new kind of loneliness.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are living even now among punishments and ruins.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A teacher's major contribution may pop out anonymously in the life of some ex-student's grandchild. A teacher, finally, has nothing to go on but faith, a student nothing to offer in return but testimony.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What we do need to worry about is the possibility that we will be reduced, in the face of the enormities of our time, to silence or to mere protest.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poetry can be written only because it has been written.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment. But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best. They enlarge the ground of judgment. The context of love is the world.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ecological teaching of the Bible is simply inescapable: God made the world because He wanted it made. He thinks the world is good, and He loves it. It is His world; He has never relinquished title to it. And He has never revoked the conditions, bearing on His gift to us of the use of it, that oblige us to take excellent care of it.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Eating is an agricultural act.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war, but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is wrong to condemn people for doing a thing and then offer no alternative but failure. A person could get mad about that.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The issue here really is not whether international trade shall be free but whether or not it makes any sense for a country — or, for that matter, a region — to destroy its own capacity to produce its own food. How can a government, entrusted with the safety and health of its people, conscientiously barter away in the name of an economic idea that people’s ability to feed itself? And if people lose their ability to feed themselves, how can they be said to be free?”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anybody interested in solving, rather than profiting from, the problems of food production and distribution will see that in the long run the safest food supply is a local food supply, not a supply that is dependent on a global economy. Nations and regions within nations must be left free — and should be encouraged — to develop the local food economies that best suit local needs and local conditions.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never forget: We are alive within mysteries.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reductionism (ultimately, the empirical explanability of everything and a cornerstone of science), has uses that are appropriate, and it also can be used inappropriately. It is appropriately used as a way (one way) of understanding what is empirically known or empirically knowable. When it becomes merely an intellectual "position" confronting what is not empirically known or knowable, then it becomes very quickly absurd, and also grossly desensitizing and false.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We know enough of our own history by now to be aware that people exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love. To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are alive within mystery, by miracle. "Life," wrote Erwin Chargaff, "is the continual intervention of the inexplicable." We have more than we can know. We know more than we can say. The constructions of language (which is to say the constructions of thought) are formed within experience, not the other way around. Finally we live beyond words, as also we live beyond computation and beyond theory. There is no reason whatever to assume that the languages of science are less limited than other languages.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To imply by the word "terrorism" that this sort of terror is the work exclusively of "terrorists" is misleading. The "legitimate" warfare of technologically advanced nations likewise is premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents. The distinction between the intention to perpetrate violence against innocents, as in "terrorism," and the willingness to do so, as in "war," is not a source of comfort.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Much of the obscurity of our effort so far against terrorism originates in the now official idea that the enemy is evil and that we are (therefore) good, which is the precise mirror image of the official idea of the terrorists.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One cannot reduce terror by holding over the world the threat of what it most fears.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We cannot hope to be secure when our government has declared, by its readiness "to act alone," its willingness to be everybody's enemy.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“After World War II, we hoped the world might be united for the sake of peacemaking. Now the world is being "globalized" for the sake of trade and the so-called free market — for the sake, that is, of plundering the world for cheap labor, cheap energy, and cheap materials. How nations, let alone regions and communities, are to shape and protect themselves within this "global economy" is far from clear.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our Constitution, by its separation of powers and its system of checks and balances, acts as a restraint upon efficiency by denying exclusive power to any branch of government. The logic of governmental efficiency, unchecked, runs straight on, not only to dictatorship, but also to torture, assassination, and other abominations.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On eroding, ecologically degraded, increasingly toxic landscapes, worked by failing or subsidy-dependent farmers and by the cheap labor of migrants, we have erected the tottering tower of "agribusiness," which prospers and "feeds the world" (incompletely and temporarily) by undermining its own foundations.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we have ever prepared for war.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you know even as little history as I do, it is hard not to doubt the efficacy of modern war as a solution to any problem except that of retribution — the “justice” of exchanging one damage for another.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“National defense through war always involves some degree of national defeat. This paradox has been with us from the very beginning of our republic. Militarization in defense of freedom reduces the freedom of the defenders. There is a fundamental inconsistency between war and freedom.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source