Quotes from Wendell Berry

Nature is always trying to tell us that we are not so superior or independent or alone or autonomous as we may think.

The Christian gospel is a summons to peace, calling for justice beyond anger, mercy beyond justice, forgiveness beyond mercy, love beyond forgiveness.

I lack the peace of simple things. I am never wholly in place. I find no peace or grace. We sell the world to buy fire, our way lighted by burning men.

Violence breeds violence. Acts of violence committed in "justice" or in affirmation of "rights" or in defense of "peace" do not end violence. They prepare and justify its continuation.

...make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came." Wendell Berry

Why should conservationists have a positive interest in... farming? There are lots of reasons, but the plainest is: Conservationists eat.

The world, which God looked at and found entirely good, we find none too good to pollute entirely and destroy piecemeal.

The latest technology is not always good for anything except to the producers of the technology.

We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities.

It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing.

We cannot hope to be secure when our government has declared, by its readiness to act alone, its willingness to be everybody's enemy.

People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.

For the true measure of agriculture is not the sophistication of its equipment the size of its income or even the statistics of its productivity but the good health of the land.

In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world.

The securest guarantee of the long-term good health of both farmland and city is, I believe, locally produced food.

We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species.

A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has his mind precisely against what is wrong with us.

Having hope is hard; harder when you get older.

Thinking is the most overrated human activity.

If you can read and have more imagination than a doorknob, what need do you have for a 'movie version' of a novel?

What I stand for is what I stand on.

The atmosphere, the earth, the water and the water cycle - those things are good gifts. The ecosystems, the ecosphere, those are good gifts. We have to regard them as gifts because we couldn't make them. We have to regard them as good gifts because we couldn't live without them.

We cannot comprehend what comprehends us.

Without prosperous local economies, the people have no power and the land no voice.