If the crop of any one year was all, a man would have to cut his throat every time it hailed. Wendell Berry More Quotes by Wendell Berry More Quotes From Wendell Berry Categorical condemnation is the hatred of the mob. It makes cowards brave. And there is nothing more fearful than a religious mob, a mob overflowing with righteousness – as at the crucifixion and before and since. This can happen only after we have made a categorical refusal to kindness: to heretics, foreigners, enemies or any other group different from ourselves. Wendell Berry hatredreligiouskindness A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance. Wendell Berry corporationsmoralnumbers We could say that the human race is a great coauthorship in which we are collaborating with God and nature in the making of ourselves and one another. From this there is no escape. We may collaborate either well or poorly or we may refuse to collaborate, but even to refuse to collaborate is to exert an influence and to affect the quality of the product. This is only a way of saying that by ourselves we have no meaning and no dignity; by ourselves we are outside the human definition, outside our identity. Wendell Berry qualitynaturerace I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a "hypaethral book," such as Thoreau talked about - a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. This is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Wendell Berry wallbookthinking Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Wendell Berry treetwoyears If we do not serve what coheres and endures, we serve what disintegrates and destroys. Wendell Berry sustainabilityendureenvironmental When humans act like animals, they become the most dangerous of animals to themselves and other humans, and this is because of another critical difference between humans and animals: Whereas animals are usually restrained by the limits of physical appetites, humans have mental appetites that can be far more gross and capacious than physical ones. Only humans squander and hoard, murder and pillage because of notions. Wendell Berry differenceslimitsanimal A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes. Wendell Berry consciousnessfoodworld What can't be helped must be endured. Wendell Berry We can say without exaggeration that the present national ambition of the United States is unemployment. People live for quitting time, for weekends, for vacations, and for retirement; moreover, this ambition seems to be classless, as true in the executive suites as on the assembly lines. One works not because the work is necessary, valuable, useful to a desirable end, or because one loves to do it, but only to be able to quit - a condition that a saner time would regard as infernal, a condemnation. Wendell Berry weekendambitionretirement When despair for the world grows in me... Wendell Berry starslightwater It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines. Wendell Berry divisionwishpeople As industrial technology advances and enlarges, and in the process assumes greater social, economic, and political force, it carries people away from where they belong by history, culture, deeds, association, and affection. Wendell Berry politicaltechnologypeople To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. Wendell Berry lightsightdark A man with a machine and inadequate culture is a pestilence. Wendell Berry machinesmenculture The industrial mind is a mind without compunction; it simply accepts that people, ultimately, will be treated as things and that things, ultimately, will be treated as garbage. (A Defense of the Family Farm, 1986) Wendell Berry defensemindpeople ...I was a young man. I hardly knew what I knew, let alone what I was going to know. Wendell Berry youngknowsmen Especially among Christians in positions of wealth and power, the idea of reading the Gospels and keeping Jesus' commandments as stated therein has been replaced by a curious process of logic. According to this process, people first declare themselves to be followers of Christ, and then they assume that whatever they say or do merits the adjective "Christian". Wendell Berry readingchristianjesus All right, every day ain't going to be the best day of your life, don't worry about that. If you stick to it you hold the possibility open that you will have better days. Wendell Berry better-dayssticksworry Under the discipline of unity, knowledge and morality come together. No longer can we have that paltry 'objective' knowledge so prized by the academic specialists. To know anything at all becomes a moral predicament. Aware that there is no such thing as a specialized effect, one becomes responsible for judgments as well as facts. Aware that as an agricultural scientist he had 'one great subject,' Sir Albert Howard could no longer ask, What can I do with what I know? without at the same time asking, How can I be responsible for what I know? Wendell Berry unitydisciplinetogether
