Quote

Our most serious problem, perhaps, is that we have become a nation of fantasists. We believe, apparently, in the infinite availability of finite resources.

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
Perhaps
Serious
Fantasists
Animal
Availability
Nations
Finite
Nature
Apparently
Become
Infinite
Problem
Resources
Believe
Nation

More quotes by Wendell Berry

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This is a book about Heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see among the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like the reflection of the trees on the water.
Wendell Berry
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If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we have ever prepared for war.
Wendell Berry
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Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.
Wendell Berry
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The earth is what we all have in common.
Wendell Berry
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The only true and effective operator's manual for spaceship earth is not a book that any human will ever write it is hundreds of thousands of local cultures.
Wendell Berry
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I hear from readers a good deal, and I try to answer every letter. I think, because of my commitment to issues of conservation and good agriculture and peaceableness, they find something hopeful in my work.
Wendell Berry
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American agriculture is badly in need of diversity. Another threat to the food system of course is the likelihood that petroleum is not going to get any cheaper.
Wendell Berry
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To love anything good, at any cost, is a bargain.
Wendell Berry
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Today, local economies are being destroyed by the 'pluralistic,' displaced, global economy, which has no respect for what works in a locality. The global economy is built on the principle that one place can be exploited, even destroyed, for the sake of another place.
Wendell Berry
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Don't own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire.
Wendell Berry
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A viable neighborhood is a community: and a viable community is made up of neighbors who cherish and protect what they have in common.
Wendell Berry
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Long live gravity! Long live stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces of fantasy capitalism!
Wendell Berry
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Nature is always trying to tell us that we are not so superior or independent or alone or autonomous as we may think.
Wendell Berry
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My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think, we should be so employed. And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves.
Wendell Berry
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It's mighty hard right now to think of anything that's precious that isn't endangered. There are no sacred and unsacred places there are only sacred and desecrated places. My belief is that the world and our life in it are conditional gifts.
Wendell Berry
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Hunger is a powerful persuader if it happens, and it's conceivable that it could happen. Country people have always known this.
Wendell Berry
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When you have large-scale legitimated violence in a place that is divided as profoundly and bitterly as Kentucky was, the legitimate violence can cause illegitimate violence, a terrible local heartlessness and cruelty that feeds on itself and goes on and on.
Wendell Berry
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We are far more concerned about the desecration of the flag than we are about the desecration of our land.
Wendell Berry
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All right, every day ain't going to be the best day of your life, don't worry about that. If you stick to it you hold the possibility open that you will have better days.
Wendell Berry
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When you take away the subsistence economy, then your farm population is seriously exposed to the vagaries of the larger economy. As it used to be, the subsistence economy carried people through the hard times, and what you might call the housewife's economy of cream and eggs often held these farms and their families together.
Wendell Berry