Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
Wendell E. Berryis an American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. A prolific author, he has written many novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth5 August 1934
CityHenry County, KY
CountryUnited States of America
Wendell Berry quotes about
The old and honorable idea of 'vocation' is simply that we each are called, by God, or by our gifts, or by our preference, to a kind of good work for which we are particularly fitted.
Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.
The more artificial a human environment becomes, the more the word ‘natural’ becomes a term of value.
And I knew that the Spirit that had gone forth to shape the world and make it live was still alive in it. I just had no doubt. I could see that I lived in the created world, and it was still being created. I would be part of it forever. There was no escape. The Spirit that made it was in it, shaping it and reshaping it, sometimes lying at rest, sometimes standing up and shaking itself, like a muddy horse, and letting the pieces fly.
For the true measure of agriculture is not the sophistication of its equipment the size of its income or even the statistics of its productivity but the good health of the land.
We still (sometimes) remember that we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else. But we have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else. The condition of the passive consumer of food is not a democratic condition. One reason to eat responsibly is to live free. (pg. 323, The Pleasures of Eating)
Why I am NOT going to buy a computer
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.
We cannot hope to be secure when our government has declared, by its readiness to act alone, its willingness to be everybody's enemy.
The connections between people and land are dangerously oversimplified and mainly technological.
To have good farming or good land use of any kind, you have got to have limits. Capitalism doesn't acknowledge limits.
The discussion about food doesn't make any sense without discussion at the same time of land, land use, land policy, fertility maintenance, and farm infrastructure maintenance.