102 quotes
The distinction between the intention to perpetrate violence against innocents, as in "terrorism," and the willingness to do so, as in "war," is not a source of comfort.
Citizenship Papers (2003)
When it becomes merely an intellectual "position" confronting what is not empirically known or knowable, then it becomes very quickly absurd, and also grossly desensitizing and false.
Life Is A Miracle : An Essay Against Modern Superstition (2000)
The most insistent and formidable concern of agriculture, wherever it is taken seriously, is the distinct individuality of every farm, every field on every farm, every farm family, and every creature on every farm.
The Way of Ignorance (2005)
We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities.
A Continuous Harmony (1972)
We have more than we can know. We know more than we can say.
Life Is A Miracle : An Essay Against Modern Superstition (2000)
Violence breeds violence. Acts of violence committed in “justice” or in affirmation of “rights” or in defense of “peace” do not end violence. They prepare and justify its continuation.
Citizenship Papers (2003)
We cannot hope to be secure when our government has declared, by its readiness "to act alone," its willingness to be everybody's enemy.
Citizenship Papers (2003)
Small creatures die because
larger creatures are hungry.
How superior to this
human confusion of greed
and creed, blood and fire.
Given (2005)
Novelty is a new kind of loneliness.
What Are People For? (1990)
The rule, acknowledged or not, seems to be that if we have great power we must use it. We would use a steam shovel to pick up a dime. We have experts who can prove there is no other way to do it.
The Long-Legged House (1969)
When the possessions and households of citizens are no longer honored by the acts, as well as the principles, of their government, then the concentration camp ceases to be one of the possibilities of human nature and becomes one of its likelihoods.
The Long-Legged House (1969)
Ask the world to reveal its quietude —
not the silence of machines when they are still,
but the true quiet by which birdsongs,
trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms
become what they are, and are nothing else.
Given (2005)
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.
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993)
Small farms make economic sense. They also produce more happiness, more beauty, more health—those things that aren’t so quantifiable...
Caretaking by Wendell Berry and Helena Norberg-Hodge, Orion Magazine (2019)
I think we must be careful about too easily accepting, or being too easily grateful for, sacrifices made by others, especially if we have made none ourselves.
Citizenship Papers (2003)
God made the world because He wanted it made. He thinks the world is good, and He loves it. It is His world; He has never relinquished title to it. And He has never revoked the conditions, bearing on His gift to us of the use of it, that oblige us to take excellent care of it.
What Are People For? (1990)
It can be guaranteed only by our willingness that all other persons should live, be free, and be at peace — and by our willingness to use or give our own lives to make that possible.
Citizenship Papers (2003)
The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war, but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful.
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993)
We know enough of our own history by now to be aware that people exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love. To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.
Life Is A Miracle : An Essay Against Modern Superstition (2000)
Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm — which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.
The Unsettling of America : Culture & Agriculture (1996)