Quote

Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.

Wendell Berry

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Wendell Berry
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: August 5
Author
Farmer
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Henry County
Kentucky
Wendell Berry
Wendell Erdman Berry
Justice
Supply
Law
Libertarian
Live
Privilege
Human
Mercy
Humans
Competition
Laws
Demand
Roaches
Beings
Rats

More quotes by Wendell Berry

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You can't know where life will take you, but you can commit to a direction
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Rural poverty happens because people aren't being paid to take adequate care of their places. There's lots of work to do here. And you can't afford to pay anybody to do it! If you depress the price of the products of the place below a certain level, people can't afford to maintain it. And that's the rural dilemma.
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It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.
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No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to spiritual subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history's most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences.
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A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life.
Wendell Berry
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Our Children no longer learn how to read the great book of Nature from their own direct experience, or how to interact creatively with the seasonal transformations of the planet. They seldom learn where their water come from or where it goes. We no longer coordinate our human celebration with the great liturgy of the heavens.
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The constructions of language, which is to say the constructions of thought, are formed within experience, not the other way around.
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I like the way that the history of the tree shapes the tree. There's no distinction between the tree and its history. You can lose yourself in that thought.
Wendell Berry
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What could be more superstitious than the idea that money brings forth food?
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The only sustainable city - and this, to me, is the indispensable ideal and goal - is a city in balance with its countryside.
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How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.
Wendell Berry
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The ecological principle in agriculture is to connect the genius of the place, to fit the farming to the farm.
Wendell Berry
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I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle... Then what I am afraid of comes. I live for a while in its sight. What I fear in it leaves it, And the fear of it leaves me. It sings, and I hear its song.
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We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true.
Wendell Berry
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Waking up from a dream of violence is much the same as waking up from a dream of love. You must go on living your life.
Wendell Berry
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There are lots of bad things that can happen to a food economy that's both extensive and centralized. There's no substitute for petroleum. To have a growth economy based on a declining fuel supply is bound to be stressful.
Wendell Berry
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It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing.
Wendell Berry
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Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health.
Wendell Berry
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It's the impeded stream that sings
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To treat life as less than a miracle is to give up on it.
Wendell Berry