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The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry

Book by Wendell Berry · 7 quotes · Community, Thinking, World

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The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry Quotes

“Despite its protests to the contrary, modern Christianity has become willy-nilly the religion of the state and the economic status quo. Because it has been so exclusively dedicated to incanting anemic souls into Heaven, it has been made the tool of much earthly villainy. It has, for the most part, stood silently by while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households.”

WorldHumansHas BeensMadeSoulStatesHeavenCommunityNaturalChristianityEconomyEconomicModernToolsEnvironmentalContraryDespiteDestroyedProtestDividedDedicatedSustainabilityHouseholdStatus QuoPredatoryVillainyEconomic Status
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“People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.”

PeopleNeedsShouldUseHateLostCommunityHealthyDrugLonelyPainfulNeighborDullIllegalLeisureOccasionalShamefulDrug UseIllegal DrugsHealthy Society
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“To think better, to think like the best humans, we are probably going to have to learn again to judge a person's intelligence, not by the ability to recite facts, but by the good order or harmoniousness of his or her surroundings. We must suspect that any statistical justification of ugliness and violence is a revelation of stupidity. (pg.192-193, People, Land, and Community)”

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“In order to survive, a plurality of true communities would require not egalitarianism and tolerance but knowledge, an understanding of the necessity of local differences, and respect. Respect, I think, always implies imagination - the ability to see one another, across our inevitable differences, as living souls.”

ThinkingSoulOrderUnderstandingCommunityImaginationDifferencesAbilityToleranceLocalsInevitableAbility To SeeEgalitarianism
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“The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.”

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