Wendell Berry Quotes about Country

All Wendell Berry Quotes Abuse Affection Age Ambition Art Assumption Character Children Choices Christianity Commitment Community Country quotes Culture Darkness Desire Doubt Drinking Eating Economy Energy Environment Expectations Failing Farming Feelings Food Freedom Generosity Genius Giving Giving Up Grace Greed Grief Growth Hatred Healing Heart Heaven Home House Humility Hurt Ignorance Imagination Inspirational Inspiring Jesus Journey Joy Justice Language Life Loneliness Lying Memories Military Morning Mountain Nature Past Pleasure Poverty Prayer Quality Rain Reading Responsibility Running Sacrifice Silence Simplicity Sin Soul Suffering Survival Sustainability Taxes Technology Understanding Violence Vision Waiting War Water Weakness Work Writing

History leaves no doubt that among of the most regrettable crimes committed by human beings have been committed by those human beings who thought of themselves as civilized. What, we must ask, does our civilization

History leaves no doubt that among of the most regrettable crimes committed by human beings have been committed by those human beings who thought of themselves as civilized. What, we must ask, does our civilization possess that is worth defending? One thing worth defending, I suggest, is the imperative to imagine the lives of beings who are not ourselves and are not like ourselves: animals, plants, gods, spirits, people of other countries, other races, people of the other sex, places and enemies.

Wendell Berry

Country, Sex, Animal

There is no sense and no sanity in objecting to the desecration of the flag while tolerating and justifying and encouraging as a daily business the desecration of the country for which it stands.

Wendell Berry

Inspiring, Country, Flags

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.127, Counterpoint

Without a complex knowledge of one's place and without the faithfulness to one's place on which such knowledge depends, it is inevitable that the place will be used carelessly, and eventually destroyed. Without such knowledge and faithfulness, moreover, the culture of a country will be superficial and decorative, functional only insofar as it may be a symbol of prestige, the affectation of an elite or "in" group.

Wendell Berry

Country, May, Groups

Wendell Berry (2012). “A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural”, p.66, Counterpoint Press

The country where he lives is haunted by the ghost of an old forest. In the cleared fields where he gardens and pastures his horses it stood once, and will return. There will be a resurrection of the wild. Already it stands in wait at the pasture fences.

Wendell Berry

Country, Horse, Past

Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.93, Counterpoint Press

I’ve been thinking about that question about what city people can do. The main thing is to realize that country people can’t invent a better agriculture by ourselves. Industrial agriculture wasn’t invented by us, and we can’t uninvent it. We’ll need some help with that.

Wendell Berry

Country, Thinking, Cities

The issue here really is not whether international trade shall be free but whether or not it makes any sense for a country - or, for that matter, a region - to destroy its own capacity to produce its own food. How can a government, entrusted with the safety and health of its people, conscientiously barter away in the name of an economic idea that people's ability to feed itself? And if people lose their ability to feed themselves, how can they be said to be free?

Wendell Berry

Country, Names, Ideas

"Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community". Book by Wendell Berry, 1993.

The problems are our lives. In the "developed" countries, at least, the large problems occur because all of us are living either partly wrong or almost entirely wrong. It was not just the greed of corporate shareholders and the hubris of corporate executives that put the fate of Prince William Sound into one ship; it was also our demand that energy be cheap and plentiful.

Wendell Berry

Country, Fate, Greed

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.198, Counterpoint Press

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.

Wendell Berry

Country, Home, Kentucky

The road is a word, conceived elsewhere and laid across the country in the wound prepared for it: a word made concrete and thrust among us.

Wendell Berry

Country, Made, Concrete

Wendell Berry (2009). “Remembering”, p.96, Counterpoint Press

It was a country . . . that he and his people had known how to use and abuse, but not how to preserve.

Wendell Berry

Country, People, Abuse

Wendell Berry (2009). “Remembering”, p.79, Counterpoint Press

The religion and the environmentalism of the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something that they do not really wish to destroy. We all live by robbing nature, but our standard of living demands that the robbery shall continue. We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do.

Wendell Berry

Country, Character, Fighting

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.201, Counterpoint

WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY - I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.

Wendell Berry

Country, Mean, Land

Wendell Berry (2006). “The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays”, p.21, Counterpoint Press

To be well used, creatures and places must be used sympathetically, just as they must be known sympathetically to be well known...The "animal scientist" to whom it is of no concern whether or not animals suffer will almost inevitably aid and abet the destruction of the decent old ideal of animal husbandry and, as a consequence, increase the suffering of animals. I hope that my country may be delivered from the remote, cold abstractions of university science.

Wendell Berry

Country, Animal, Pet