Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
Wendell E. Berryis an American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. A prolific author, he has written many novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth5 August 1934
CityHenry County, KY
CountryUnited States of America
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.
To define knowledge as merely empirical is to limit one's ability to know; it enfeebles one's ability to feel and think.
If they had only themselves to consider, lovers would not need to marry, but they must think of others and of other things. They say their vows to the community as much as to one another, and the community gathers around them to hear and to wish them well, on their behalf and its own. It gathers around them because it understands how necessary, how joyful, and how fearful this joining is. These lovers, pledging themselves to one another "until death," are giving themselves away, and they are joined by this as no law or contract could join them.
There are not enough rich and powerful people to consume the whole world; for that, the rich and powerful need the help of countless ordinary people.
Give your approval to all you cannot understand.
Beauty . . . cannot be interpreted. It is not an empirically verifiable fact; it is not a quantity.
A farmer's market is worth more than everything I've written.
An art that heals and protects its subject is a geography of scars.
It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.
We have forgotten that Vietnam, and Iraq resent being invaded and know the ground better than we do.
Those who say Islam is a warlike religion must ask if Christianity has been as well.
Monsanto doesn't care about feeding the world. We have to think about the wage slavery of migrant workers and salary slavery of those who are desperately unhappy.
Community, then, is an indispensable term in any discussion of the connection between people and land. A healthy community is a form that includes all the local things that are connected by the larger, ultimately mysterious form of the Creation. In speaking of community, then, we are speaking of a complex connection not only among human beings or between humans and their homeland but also between human economy and nature, between forest or prairie and field or orchard, and between troublesome creatures and pleasant ones. All neighbors are included.