“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong.”
"A Native Hill"
The Long-Legged House (1969)
Context: We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us... We must recover the sense of the majesty of the creation and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.
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Wendell Berry 189
author 1934Related quotes
Statement to Polaroid Corporation employes (25 June 1958), as quoted in Insisting on the Impossible : The Life of Edwin Land (1998) by Victor K. McElheny, p. 189
“If the assumptions are wrong, the conclusions aren't likely to be very good.”
Cited in: Norman Pascoe (2011) Reliability Technology: Principles and Practice of Failure Prevention in Electronic Systems. Ch. 5
Principles of Operations Research (1975)

“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”
Source: Life on the Mississippi

Nous verrons à sa lumière, dans l'éternité, que ce que nous désirions nous eût été funeste, et que ce que nous voulions éviter était essentiel à notre bonheur.
Instructions et avis sur divers points de la morale et de la perfection chrétienne, ch. 18, cited from Œuvres de Fénelon (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1845) vol. 1, p. 325; translation from Selections from the Writings of Fénelon (Boston: Samuel G. Simpkins, 1844) p. 82.

2000s, 2004, Speech at the Republican National Convention (2004)