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Wendell Berry Quotes

1934–2026 United States

Wendell Berry (August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026) was an American philosopher, poet, essayist, farmer, novelist and social activist.

United States
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Also known as: Berry, Wendell

Random Wendell Berry quote

102 quotes

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

The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly.

The Way of Ignorance (2005)

An art that heals and protects its subject is a geography of scars.

What Are People For? (1990)

Poetry can be written only because it has been written.

What Are People For? (1990)

If I solve my dispute with my neighbor by killing him, I have certainly solved the immediate dispute.

The Long-Legged House (1969)

How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.

To have peace you must make peace with your enemy. To make peace only with your friends is to avoid the issue, and to permit a great principle to become absurd.

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)

What I stand for
is what I stand on.

I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

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)

It is wrong to condemn people for doing a thing and then offer no alternative but failure. A person could get mad about that.

Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993)

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

We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species.

What Are People For? (1990)

By this time, the era of cut-and-run economics ought to be finished. Such an economy cannot be rationally defended or even apologized for. The proofs of its immense folly, heartlessness, and destructiveness are everywhere.

Another Turn of the Crank (1996)

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.

Citizenship Papers (2003)

We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. ... We have been wrong.

The Long-Legged House (1969)

Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.

Citizenship Papers (2003)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Wendell Berry (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.