Thinking Quotes by Wendell Berry

It is the man who can think of no alternative to his enslavement who is truly a slave.

— Wendell Berry

Thinking is the most overrated human activity.

— Wendell Berry

I could die in peace, I think, if the world was beautiful. To know it's being ruined is hard.

— Wendell Berry

Nature is always trying to tell us that we are not so superior or independent or alone or autonomous as we may…

— Wendell Berry

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

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

I think the issues of identity mostly are poppycock. We are what we have done, which includes our promises, includes our hopes,…

— Wendell Berry

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

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

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

In order to survive, a plurality of true communities would require not egalitarianism and tolerance but knowledge, an understanding of the necessity…

— Wendell Berry

My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think,…

— Wendell Berry

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

I hear from readers a good deal, and I try to answer every letter. I think, because of my commitment to issues…

— Wendell Berry

Eating is an agricultural act. Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters,…

— Wendell Berry

To me, an economy that sees the life of a community or a place as expendable, and reckons its value only in…

— Wendell Berry

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

Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of…

— Wendell Berry

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

I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved…

— Wendell Berry

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

Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the…

— Wendell Berry

There are endless ways to amuse oneself and be idle, and most of them lie outside the woods. I assume that when…

— Wendell Berry

If they had only themselves to consider, lovers would not need to marry, but they must think of others and of other…

— Wendell Berry

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

In the loss of skill, we lose stewardship; in losing stewardship we lose fellowship; we become outcasts from the great neighborhood of…

— Wendell Berry

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

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

Properly speaking, global thinking is not possible... Look at one of those photographs of half the earth taken from outer space, and…

— Wendell Berry

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

We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and for each other. It is either that or continue merely to…

— Wendell Berry

It is possible, I think, to say that... a Christian agriculture [is] formed upon the understanding that it is sinful for people…

— Wendell Berry

The good of the whole of Creation, the world and all its creatures together, is never a consideration because it is never…

— Wendell Berry

The question before me, now that I am old, is not how to be dead, which I know from enough practice, but…

— Wendell Berry

As I understand it, I am being paid only for my work in arranging the words; my property is that arrangement. The…

— Wendell Berry

Can we actually suppose that we are wasting, polluting, and making ugly this beautiful land for the sake of patriotism and the…

— Wendell Berry

The surface of the quieted river, as I think now, is like a window looking into another world that is like this…

— Wendell Berry

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

It is therefore absurd to approach the subject of health piecemeal with a departmentalized band of specialists. A medical doctor uninterested in…

— Wendell Berry

As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found…

— Wendell Berry