“When the industrial colonialists and the politicians agree to sacrifice a region to a single economic goal, they inevitably sacrifice the people… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
If you establish, or reestablish, local economies on the right scale and with the right standard, then politics would come right as… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
We cannot hope to be secure when our government has declared, by its readiness to act alone, its willingness to be everybody's… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
What would be the point of being personally whole in a dismembered society, or personally healthy in a land scalped, eroded and… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
“But politicians quickly learned to pacify the liberals by passing laws and regulations that, to pacify the conservatives, would not be enforced.” — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
When the possessions and households of citizens are no longer honored by the acts, as well as the principles, of their government,… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary:… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Whether we or our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
From the union of power and money, from the union of power and secrecy, from the union of government and science, from… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The Captains of Industry have always counseled the rest of us "to be realistic." Let us, therefore, be realistic. Is it realistic… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
“This economy is based upon consumption, which ultimately serves, not the ordinary consumers, but a tiny class of excessively wealthy people for… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
We are going to have to gather up the fragments of knowledge and responsibilities that have been turned over to governments, corporations,… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
To the extent that we consume, in our present circumstances, we are guilty. To the extent that we guilty consumers are conservationists, we are absurd. But what can we do? Must we go on writing letters to politicians and donating to conservation organizations until the majority of our fellow citizens agree with us? Or can we do something directly to… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
However destructive may be the policies of the government and the methods and products of the corporations, the root of the problem… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
“One possibility is just to tag along with the fantasists in government and industry who would have us believe that we can pursue our ideals of affluence, comfort, mobility, and leisure indefinitely. This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
“While the government is "studying" and funding and organizing its Big Thought, nothing is being done. But the citizen who is willing… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Our politics and science have never mastered the fact that people need more than to understand their obligation to one another and… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
“We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
“In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
“To think of food as a weapon, or of a weapon as food, may give an illusory security and wealth to a… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities. — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
“There should be no relenting in our efforts to influence politics and politicians. But in the name of honesty and sanity we… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
“As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
During the last 17 years... I have been working at the restoration of a once exhausted hillside. Its scars are now healed over, though still visible, and this year it has provided abundant pasture, more than in any year since we have owned it. But to make it as good as it is now has taken 17 years. If I… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst, we cannot have it all, or want it all. In its abundance it survives our thirst. In the evening we come down to the shore to drink our fill, and sleep, while it flows through the regions… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
To husband is to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve. Old usage tells us that there is a… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
“The two families, sundered in the ruin of a friendship, were united again first in new friendship and then in mariage. My grandfather made… — Wendell Berry Copy Share 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… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
“I knew a man who, in the age of chain-saws, went right on cutting his wood with a handsaw and an axe. He was… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
“The concept of country, homeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as "the environment" -- that is, what surrounds us, we have already made a profound division between it an ourselves. We have given up the understanding -- dropped it out of our language and so out of our thought -- that we and our country create one another, depend on one… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
“That we can prescribe the terms of our own success, that we can live outside or in ignorance of the Great Economy are the greatest errors. They condemn us to a life without a standard, wavering in inescapable bewilderment from paltry self-satisfaction to paltry self-dissatisfaction. But since we have no place to live but in the Great Economy, whether or… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
“The mind that comes to rest is tended In ways that it cannot intend: Is borne, preserved, and comprehended By what it cannot comprehend.… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The mercy of the world is time. Time does not stop for love, but it does not stop for death and grief, either. — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all. — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
