Wendell Berry: Trending quotes

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Wendell Berry: 378 quotes7 likes

“Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.”

"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" in Farming: A Hand Book (1970).
Poems

“Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war.”

"A Statement against the War in Vietnam".
The Long-Legged House (1969)

“The rule, acknowledged or not, seems to be that if we have great power we must use it. We would use a steam shovel to pick up a dime. We have experts who can prove there is no other way to do it.”

"The Loss of the Future".
The Long-Legged House (1969)

“A mind that has confronted ruin for years
Is half or more a ruined mind.”

Given (2005), Sabbaths 2001

“From the union of power and money,
from the union of power and secrecy,
from the union of government and science,
from the union of government and art,
from the union of science and money,
from the union of ambition and ignorance,
from the union of genius and war,
from the union of outer space and inner vacuity,
the Mad Farmer walks quietly away.”

"The Mad Farmer, Flying the Flag of Rough Branch, Secedes from the Union" in Entries (1997).
Poems

“Our century of war, militarism, and political terror has produced great — and successful — advocates of true peace, among whom Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., are the paramount examples. The considerable success that they achieved testifies to the presence, in the midst of violence, of an authentic and powerful desire for peace and, more important, of the proven will to make the necessary sacrifices.”

Citizenship Papers (2003), The Failure of War

“If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we have ever prepared for war.”

Citizenship Papers (2003), A Citizen's Response

“What we do need to worry about is the possibility that we will be reduced, in the face of the enormities of our time, to silence or to mere protest.”

"A Poem of Difficult Hope".
What Are People For? (1990)

“Today, local economies are being destroyed by the "pluralistic," displaced, global economy, which has no respect for what works in a locality. The global economy is built on the principle that one place can be exploited, even destroyed, for the sake of another place.”

Interview in New Perspectives Quarterly (1992), quoted in his Profile at The Poetry Foundation http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=540

“Poetry can be written only because it has been written.”

"The Responsibility of the Poet".
What Are People For? (1990)

“The more local and settled a culture, the better it stays put, the less the damage. It is the foreigner whose road of excess leads to a desert … a man with a machine and inadequate culture … is a pestilence. He shakes more than he can hold.”

"Damage".
What Are People For? (1990)

“If you know even as little history as I do, it is hard not to doubt the efficacy of modern war as a solution to any problem except that of retribution — the “justice” of exchanging one damage for another.”

Citizenship Papers (2003), The Failure of War

“Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium.”

"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" in Farming: A Hand Book (1970).
Poems

“Let me say
and not mourn: the world
lives in the death of speech
and sings there.”

The Silence.
Poems

“There’s nothing under the ground that’s worth more than the little layer of topsoil sitting on top of it.”

Comment at City Arts & Lecture Series, Herbst Theater, San Francisco, CA; 29 October 2012 http://thirtythreadbaremercies.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/the-mad-farmer-lives-a-night-with-wendell-berry/#

“The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war, but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful.”

"Peaceableness Toward Enemies".
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993)

“In the effort to tell a whole story, to see it whole and clear, I have had to imagine more than I have known.”

"Imagination in Place".
The Way of Ignorance (2005)

“I think we must be careful about too easily accepting, or being too easily grateful for, sacrifices made by others, especially if we have made none ourselves.”

Citizenship Papers (2003), The Failure of War

“The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.”

"Healing".
What Are People For? (1990)

“Much of the obscurity of our effort so far against terrorism originates in the now official idea that the enemy is evil and that we are (therefore) good, which is the precise mirror image of the official idea of the terrorists.”

Citizenship Papers (2003), A Citizen's Response