Home / Quotes / Quote by Wendell Berry

Quote by Wendell Berry

“The crisis of community has its source in the corruption of character.”

Book:The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

Work

The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

A profound and thought-provoking analysis of the relationship between agriculture and culture in the United States, exploring the consequences of industrial farming practices on the environment, economy, and community life. more

Author

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry, an American novelist born on August 5, 1934, is renowned for his profound descriptions of rural life and his critical views on modern industrial civilization. more

“Never permit circumstances to change your plans, but give so much character to your plans that they will change circumstances. Give so much character to the current of your work that all things will be drawn into that current, and that which at ﬁrst was but a tiny rivulet, will thus be swelled into a mighty, majestic stream.”

Character Work Circumstances Permit Majestic Mighty

Author:Christian D. Larson

“We are dealing, then, with an absurdity that is not a quirk or an accident, but is fundamental to our character as people. The split between what we think and what we do is profound. It is not just possible, it is altogether to be expected, that our society would produce conservationists who invest in strip-mining companies, just as it must inevitably produce asthmatic executives whose industries pollute the air and vice-presidents of pesticide corporations whose children are dying of cancer. And these people will tell you that this is the way the "real world" works. The will pride themselves on their sacrifices for "our standard of living." They will call themselves "practical men" and "hardheaded realists." And they will have their justifications in abundance from intellectuals, college professors, clergymen, politicians. The viciousness of a mentality that can look complacently upon disease as "part of the cost" would be obvious to any child. But this is the "realism" of millions of modern adults. There is no use pretending that the contradiction between what we think or say and what we do is a limited phenomenon. There is no group of the extra-intelligent or extra-concerned or extra-virtuous that is exempt. I cannot think of any American whom I know or have heard of, who is not contributing in some way to destruction. The reason is simple: to live undestructively in an economy that is overwhelmingly destructive would require of any one of us, or of any small group of us, a great deal more work than we have yet been able to do. How could we divorce ourselves completely and yet responsibly from the technologies and powers that are destroying our planet? The answer is not yet thinkable, and it will not be thinkable for some time -- even though there are now groups and families and persons everywhere in the country who have begun the labor of thinking it. And so we are by no means divided, or readily divisible, into environmental saints and sinners. But there are legitimate distinctions that need to be made. These are distinctions of degree and of consciousness. Some people are less destructive than others, and some are more conscious of their destructiveness than others. For some, their involvement in pollution, soil depletion, strip-mining, deforestation, industrial and commercial waste is simply a "practical" compromise, a necessary "reality," the price of modern comfort and convenience. For others, this list of involvements is an agenda for thought and work that will produce remedies. People who thus set their lives against destruction have necessarily confronted in themselves the absurdity that they have recognized in their society. They have first observed the tendency of modern organizations to perform in opposition to their stated purposes. They have seen governments that exploit and oppress the people they are sworn to serve and protect, medical procedures that produce ill health, schools that preserve ignorance, methods of transportation that, as Ivan Illich says, have 'created more distances than they... bridge.' And they have seen that these public absurdities are, and can be, no more than the aggregate result of private absurdities; the corruption of community has its source in the corruption of character. This realization has become the typical moral crisis of our time. Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live.”

Character Counter Productive

Book:The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

Source: The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

“When we justify a flaw we are actually inventing a new one. When a woman neglects developing her own character, she not only chisels away her own reputation, but the reputation of everyone in her household.”

Character Growth Reputation Household Good Wife Song Of Songs Song Of Solomon Shulamite

Book:Song of Songs: The Book for Daughters

Source: Song of Songs: The Book for Daughters

“The 10 ever greatest misplacements in life: 1. Leadership without character. 2. Followership without servant-being. 3. Brotherhood without integrity. 4. Affluence without wisdom. 5. Authority without conscience. 6. Relationship without faithfullness. 7. Festivals without peace. 8. Repeated failure without change. 9. Good wealth without good health. 10. Love without a lover.”