Skip to content

We cannot hope to be secure when our government has declared, by its readiness "to act alone," its willingness to be everybody's enemy.

— Wendell Berry Citizenship Papers (2003)

Another quote →

Topics

Government

More quotes by Wendell Berry

Individualism is going around these days in uniform, handing out the party line on individualism.

A Continuous Harmony (1972)

It is impossible to care for each other more or differently than we care for the earth.

The Unsettling of America (1977)

If you can control a people’s economy, you don’t need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant.

Another Turn of the Crank (1996)

To be sane in a mad time
is bad for the brain, worse
for the heart.

We are living even now among punishments and ruins.

What Are People For? (1990)

All Wendell Berry quotes →

You may also like

Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Wendell Berry (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.