Quotessence
Home / Authors / Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllWorldPeopleIfsKnowsEconomyHumansThinkingCommunityEnvironmentalLandNatureMayWayEarthNeedsMenCreationWaterCreaturesAgriculture

Famous Wendell Berry Quotes

“Our politics and science have never mastered the fact that people need more than to understand their obligation to one another and to the earth; they need also the feeling of such obligation, and the feeling can come only within the patterns of familiarity. A nation of urban nomads, such as we have become, may simply be unable to be enough disturbed by its destruction of the ecological health of the land, because the people's dependence on the land, though it has been expounded to them over and over again in general terms, is not immediate to their feelings.”

PeopleNeedsMayHas BeensEnoughFactsFeelingsEarthNationsTermLandDestructionPatternsObligationUrbanDependenceFamiliarityDisturbedEcologicalNomad
Author:Wendell Berry
Create image

“If they had only themselves to consider, lovers would not need to marry, but they must think of others and of other things. They say their vows to the community as much as to one another, and the community gathers around them to hear and to wish them well, on their behalf and its own. It gathers around them because it understands how necessary, how joyful, and how fearful this joining is. These lovers, pledging themselves to one another "until death," are giving themselves away, and they are joined by this as no law or contract could join them.”

IfsThinkingNeedsGivingWellsLawWishCommunityLoversContractsFearfulJoyfulBehalfVowJoining
Author:Wendell Berry
Create image

“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.”

NeedsShouldLongProblemRunningLeftNationsEconomyConditionsProductionsLocalsSuitsDependentRegionsLong RunsDistributionGlobal EconomyBe EncouragedFood SupplyFood ProductionLocal Food
Book:The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
Create image

“It is better to buy from a small, privately owned local store than from a chain store. It is better to buy a good product than a bad one. Do not buy anything you don't need. Do as much as you can for yourself. If you cannot do something for yourself, see if you have a neighbor who can do it for you. Do everything you can to see that your money stays as long as possible in the local community.”

IfsNeedsLongCan DoCommunityProductsEnvironmentalStoresNeighborLocalsChainsSustainabilityLocal Community
Book:Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays
Create image

“If you're a writer and you are at all inclined to speak as a Christian in some way, you realize very quickly that the conventional language is pretty much useless. It takes a long time to get past that, or it has taken me a long time. People in conventional Christianity have spoken lightly and sometimes frivolously of God for a long time. It's a word that needs to be used sparingly, in my opinion.”

PeopleIfsWayNeedsLongSometimesChristianPastUsedSpeakLanguageRealizingChristianityOpinionTakenLong TimeUselessConventional
Author:Wendell Berry
Create image

“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... What I am saying is that if we apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. We will begin to understand and to mistrust and to change our wasteful economy, which markets not just the produce of earth, but also the earth's ability to produce.”

IfsNeedsMindPersonsHomeEarthGrowsAbilityPracticeEconomyProduceGardenFundamentalsPreservesSoilExploitsMistrustNecessary Change
Author:Wendell Berry
Create image

“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
Book:The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
Create image

“A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members - among them the need to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy. (pg. 63, "Racism and the Economy")”

NeedsShouldWellsRememberSpiritualPoliticalSocialCommunityWealthAnswersEconomyIdentityMembersRacismResourcesPracticalsRestorationAlignmentPolitical PowerCommonwealth
Book:The Hidden Wound
Create image

“If we are to have a culture as resilient and competent in the face of necessity as it needs to be, then it must somehow involve within itself a ceremonious generosity toward the wilderness of natural force and instinct. The farm must yield a place to the forest, not as a wood lot, or even as a necessary agricultural principle but as a sacred grove - a place where the Creation is let alone, to serve as instruction, example, refuge; a place for people to go, free of work and presumption, to let themselves alone. (pg. 125, The Body and the Earth)”

PeopleIfsNeedsBodyEarthFacesCultureForceNaturalPrinciplesExampleCreationSacredInstinctWoodsForestsGenerosityWildernessYieldFarmsInstructionRefugeCompetentResilientPresumptionGrove
Author:Wendell Berry
Create image

“The living can't quit living because the world has turned terrible and people they love and need are killed. They can't because they don't. The light that shines into darkness and never goes out calls them on into life. It calls them back again into the great room. It calls them into their bodies and into the world, into whatever the world will require. It calls them into work and pleasure, goodness and beauty, and the company of other loved ones.”

PeopleWorldNeedsBodyLightPleasureRoomsCompanyDarknessTerribleGoodnessShiningQuittingLoved OnesBack Again
Book:Hannah Coulter: A Novel
Create image

“There are endless ways to amuse oneself and be idle, and most of them lie outside the woods. I assume that when a man goes to the woods he goes because he needs to. I think he is drawn to the wilderness much as he is drawn to a woman: it is, in its way, his opposite. It is as far as possible unlike his home or his work or anything he will ever manufacture. For that reason he can take from it a solace-an understanding of himself, of what he needs and what he can do without-such as he can find nowhere else.”

ThinkingMenWayNeedsReasonHomeLyingUnderstandingCan DoOppositesAssumingOneselfWoodsEndlessWildernessIdleSolace
Author:Wendell Berry
Create image

“We do need a 'new economy,' but one that is founded on thrift and care, on saving and conserving, not on excess and waste. An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product. We need a peaceable economy.”

NeedsWarCareNatureEconomyEnvironmentProductsWasteEnvironmentalSimplicityViolentSavingInevitableExcessThriftConserving
Book:In the Presence of Fear: Three Essays for a Changed World
Create image

“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
Book:What Are People For?: Essays
Create image

“We need to confront honestly the issue of scale... 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.”

NeedsMayRunningProcessIssuesCarRaisesHonestlyScalesLocalsCorporationsChickensAirlineHogTimberLocal Food
Book:The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays
Create image