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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

How nations, let alone regions and communities, are to shape and protect themselves within this "global economy" is far from clear.

Citizenship Papers (2003)

Its tendency is just as much toward total dominance and control.

Citizenship Papers (2003)

We are alive within mystery, by miracle.

Life Is A Miracle : An Essay Against Modern Superstition (2000)

Nations and regions within nations must be left free — and should be encouraged — to develop the local food economies that best suit local needs and local conditions.

Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993)

The context of love is the world.

What Are People For? (1990)

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

That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.

We are disposed, somewhat by culture and somewhat by nature, to solve our problems by violence, and even to enjoy doing so.

Citizenship Papers (2003)

We cling in our public life to a brutal hypocrisy.

Citizenship Papers (2003)

Our model citizen is a sophisticate who before puberty understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato.

A Continuous Harmony (1972)

In a modern war, fought with modern weapons and on the modern scale, neither side can limit to “the enemy” the damage that it does. These wars damage the world.

Citizenship Papers (2003)

A teacher's major contribution may pop out anonymously in the life of some ex-student's grandchild. A teacher, finally, has nothing to go on but faith, a student nothing to offer in return but testimony.

What Are People For? (1990)

Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call “the economy” or “the free market” is less and less distinguishable from warfare.

Citizenship Papers (2003)

The logic of governmental efficiency, unchecked, runs straight on, not only to dictatorship, but also to torture, assassination, and other abominations.

Citizenship Papers (2003)

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

The Way of Ignorance (2005)

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.

What Are People For? (1990)

Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world.

Eating is an agricultural act.

What Are People For? (1990)

Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.

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.

What Are People For? (1990)

Attribution

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