Wendell Berry Quotes

18 quotes from 12 authors

Wendell Berry’s words still echo in climate debates, and these 18 snippets pull his rural wisdom into conversation. Voices range from hopeful calls to plant sequoias and stark reminders that character, not just policy, will decide our future. For broader context, see the “Sustainability” and “Environmental Ethics” pages.

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“Modern ignorance is in people's assumption that they can outsmart their own nature. Wendell Berry”

Wendell Berry

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I always turn to Wendell Berry for inspiration on food, community, agriculture, and, well, just being a human.

Samin Nosrat

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“Wendell Berry warned, “It is easy . . . to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to…

Tish Harrison Warren

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“We can start work we won’t see the end of. “Plant sequoias,” urges Wendell Berry: Put your faith in the two inches…

C. Christopher Smith

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“Eaters must understand,” Wendell Berry writes, “that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and…

Barbara Kingsolver

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“If the environmental crisis is ultimately a crisis of character, as Wendell Berry told us way back in the 1970's, then sooner…

Michael Pollan

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“Fasting is a spiritual exercise whose purpose is to subject the body to the liberating yoke of Jesus. As Wendell Berry puts…

Rod Dreher

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“We disdain limits. Wendell Berry warned, “It is easy . . . to imagine that the next great division of the world…

Tish Harrison Warren

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Not only do I recommend Wendell Berry to anyone who will talk to me for more than seven seconds, but I buy…

Nick Offerman

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“To go into the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight…

Toni Bernhard

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THE WILD ROSE” – BY WENDELL BERRY Sometimes, hidden from me in daily custom and in ritual I live by you unaware,…

Wendell Berry

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“Wendell Berry’s definition: “If the word community is to mean or amount to anything, it must refer to a place (in its…

Mark Votava

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“Eating is an agricultural act," Wendell Berry famously wrote, by which he meant that we are not just passive consumers of food…

Michael Pollan

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“For what is the environmental crisis, if not a crisis of the way we live? The Big Problem is nothing more or…

Michael Pollan

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“Eating is an agricultural act,' as Wendell Berry famously said. It is also an ecological act, and a political act, too. Though…

Michael Pollan

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It would not do for the consumer to know that the hamburger she is eating came from a steer who spent much…

Leonard Sweet

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“Increasingly, progressive voices in the media are shining a spotlight on the need for new businesses that serve both entrepreneurs and local…

Ralph Nader

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I first read Wendell Berry's short-story collections, "Fidelity" and then "Watch with Me." They just knocked my socks off. The characters and…

Nick Offerman

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