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What Are People For?: Essays

Book by Wendell Berry · 29 quotes · World, Eating, Humans

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What Are People For?: Essays Quotes

“The answers to the human problems of ecology are to be found in economy. And the answers to the problems of economy are to be found in culture and character. To fail to see this is to go on dividing the world falsely between guilty producers and innocent consumers.”

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“The religion and the environmentalism of the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something that they do not really wish to destroy. We all live by robbing nature, but our standard of living demands that the robbery shall continue. We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do.”

CountryCharacterFightingWishAchieveSkillsDemandStandardsBottomAcquireLive ByConsumerismEnvironmentalismOverconsumptionStandards Of LivingRobberyRobbing
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“We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and for each other. It is either that or continue merely to think and talk about changes that we are inviting catastrophe to make. The great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependant on what is wrong. But that is the addict's excuse, and we know that it will not do.”

ThinkingKnowsWasteConvictionExcuseObstaclesConsumerismCatastropheAddictInvitingOverconsumption
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“Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living in a mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.”

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“The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know that the garden is healthy will remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating. (pg. 326, The Pleasures of Eating)”

PeopleKnowsShouldFirstsLightRememberMemoriesPleasureMorningGrowingHealthyEatingGardenPlantMereVegetablesGourmet
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“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.”

WorldLifeLove IsAmbitionJudgmentStandardsHumbleSelfishnessExpensesMediocrityOstentation
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“The problems are our lives. In the "developed" countries, at least, the large problems occur because all of us are living either partly wrong or almost entirely wrong. It was not just the greed of corporate shareholders and the hubris of corporate executives that put the fate of Prince William Sound into one ship; it was also our demand that energy be cheap and plentiful.”

CountryProblemEnergySoundOur LivesFateDemandGreedShipsCorporateExecutivesRenewable EnergyShareholdersHubrisDeveloped CountryPlentiful
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“It would not do for the consumer to know that the hamburger she is eating came from a steer who spent much of his life standing deep in his own excrement in a feedlot, helping to pollute the local streams. Or that the calf that yielded the veal cutlet on her plate spent its life in a box in which it did not have room to turn around.”

KnowsHelpingTurnsAnimalRoomsIndustryEatingStandingBoxesLocalsConsumersStreamsPlatesSteersHamburgersCalves
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“We enter solitude, in which also we lose loneliness. True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation. One’s inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of one’s most intimate sources. In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.”

FeelsHumansFoundVoiceLosesLonelinessSourceSolitudeCreaturesConsequenceOneselfAttractionObligationIntimateCommunionInner VoiceWild Places
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“Eating is an agricultural act. Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters, however, are no longer aware that this is true. They think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of themselves as participants in agriculture. They think of themselves as 'consumers.'”

ThinkingEndsEconomyProductsBirthDramaEatingConsumersAgricultureParticipantsAnnuals
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“We do not need to plan or devise a "world of the future"; if we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us. A good future is implicit in the soils, forests, grasslands, marshes, deserts, mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans that we have now, and in the good things of human culture that we have now; the only valid "futurology" available to us is to take care of those things. We have no need to contrive and dabble at "the future of the human race"; we have the same pressing need that we have always had - to love, care for, and teach our children.”

IfsWorldNeedsHumansChildrenCareCultureJusticeRaceTeachPlansMountainOceanRiversOur ChildrenGood ThingsAvailableTake CareForestsDesertHuman RaceSoilLakesStewardshipImplicitMarshesGood FutureGrasslands
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“We clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us; we enter the little circle of each other's arms, and the larger circle of lovers whose hands are joined in a dance, and the larger circle of all creatures, passing in and out of life, who move also in a dance, to a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it except in fragments.”

LittlesHandsMovingArmsLoversCreaturesEarsCirclesPassingPassingsSubtleFragments
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