To define knowledge as merely empirical is to limit one's ability to know; it enfeebles one's ability to feel and think. — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
It is the man who can think of no alternative to his enslavement who is truly a slave. — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Nature is always trying to tell us that we are not so superior or independent or alone or autonomous as we may… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
I could die in peace, I think, if the world was beautiful. To know it's being ruined is hard. — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Monsanto doesn't care about feeding the world. We have to think about the wage slavery of migrant workers and salary slavery of… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
I think the issues of identity mostly are poppycock. We are what we have done, which includes our promises, includes our hopes,… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
To me, an economy that sees the life of a community or a place as expendable, and reckons its value only in… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
It is understood that nonhuman creatures adapt to their places or they don't live. And for some reason that I can't figure… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Eating is an agricultural act. Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters,… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
In order to survive, a plurality of true communities would require not egalitarianism and tolerance but knowledge, an understanding of the necessity… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
As I understand it, I am being paid only for my work in arranging the words; my property is that arrangement. The… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The question before me, now that I am old, is not how to be dead, which I know from enough practice, but… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
It is possible, I think, to say that... a Christian agriculture [is] formed upon the understanding that it is sinful for people… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
If they had only themselves to consider, lovers would not need to marry, but they must think of others and of other… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
You've got to reach towards a better language, and you're not going to make it up from scratch; you've got to reach… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
There are endless ways to amuse oneself and be idle, and most of them lie outside the woods. I assume that when… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The surface of the quieted river, as I think now, is like a window looking into another world that is like this… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Can we actually suppose that we are wasting, polluting, and making ugly this beautiful land for the sake of patriotism and the… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The good of the whole of Creation, the world and all its creatures together, is never a consideration because it is never… — 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
I’ve been thinking about that question about what city people can do. The main thing is to realize that country people can’t… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
In the loss of skill, we lose stewardship; in losing stewardship we lose fellowship; we become outcasts from the great neighborhood of… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and for each other. It is either that or continue merely to… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
A man's life is always dealing with permanence, that is the most dangerous kind of irresponsibility is to think of your doings… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
I don't think I had even begun to have an idea where I was going, but wherever it was, that was where… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
We are now, measurably, reducing the availability of these life-supporting goods which we can think of (though only on the conditions of… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
It's mighty hard right now to think of anything that's precious that isn't endangered. There are no sacred and unsacred places; there… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
This, I thought, is what is meant by 'thy will be done' in the Lord's Prayer, which I had prayed time and… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
I hear from readers a good deal, and I try to answer every letter. I think, because of my commitment to issues… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think,… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Properly speaking, global thinking is not possible... Look at one of those photographs of half the earth taken from outer space, and… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
In this state of total consumerism-which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a "hypaethral book," such as… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
It is therefore absurd to approach the subject of health piecemeal with a departmentalized band of specialists. A medical doctor uninterested in… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
To think better, to think like the best humans, we are probably going to have to learn again to judge a person's… — 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… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst, we… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
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.… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
“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… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
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… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
“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