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In living in the world by his own will and skill, the stupidest peasant or tribesman is more competent than the most intelligent worker or technician or intellectual in a society of specialists.

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
Workers
Technicians
Intelligent
Stupidest
Skills
Peasant
Intellectual
Specialists
Society
Peasants
Living
Competent
Work
Worker
World
Skill
Technician

More quotes by Wendell Berry

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When you are new at sheep-raising and your ewe has a lamb, your impulse is to stay there and help it nurse and see to it and all. After a while you know that the best thing you can do is walk out of the barn.
Wendell Berry
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If you can read and have more imagination than a doorknob, what need do you have for a 'movie version' of a novel?
Wendell Berry
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We conservatives bemoan the decline in values that has besieged our society. Why then should we not abhor the lack of morality involved in discharging untested chemicals into the air, ground, and water to alter and harm, to whatever degree, human life and wildlife? As a conservative, I do abhor it.
Wendell Berry
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I dream of a quiet man / who explains nothing and defends nothing, but only knows / where the rarest wildflowers / are blooming, and who goes, / and finds that he is smiling / not by his own will.
Wendell Berry
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If the devil doesn't exist... how do you explain that some people are a lot worse than they're smart enough to be?
Wendell Berry
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The answers to the human problems of ecology are to be found in economy. And the answers to the problems of economy are to be found in culture and character. To fail to see this is to go on dividing the world falsely between guilty producers and innocent consumers.
Wendell Berry
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Sabbath observance invites us to stop. It invites us to rest. It asks us to notice that while we rest, the world continues without our help. It invites us to delight in the world's beauty and abundance.
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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The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.
Wendell Berry
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You don't need to be told some things. You can sometimes tell more by a man's silence and the set of his head than by what he says.
Wendell Berry
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It is the man who can think of no alternative to his enslavement who is truly a slave.
Wendell Berry
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These are people who are capable of devotion, public devotion, to justice. They meant what they said and every day that passes, they mean it more.
Wendell Berry
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The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly.
Wendell Berry
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Unexpected wonders happen, not on schedule, or when you expect or want them to happen, but if you keep hanging around, they do happen.
Wendell Berry
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I could die in peace, I think, if the world was beautiful. To know it's being ruined is hard.
Wendell Berry
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What I stand for is what I stand on.
Wendell Berry
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You may say that I am just another outdated old man complaining about progress and the changes of time. But, you see, I have well considered that possibility myself, and am prepared o submit to correction by anybody who cares about a community, who can show me how the world is improved by that community's dying.
Wendell Berry
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We cannot comprehend what comprehends us.
Wendell Berry
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Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest.
Wendell Berry
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Returning from the wilderness a man becomes a restorer of order, a preserver. He sees the truth, recognizes his true heir, honors his forbears and his heritage, and gives his blessing to his successors. He embodies the passing of human time, living and dying within the human limits of grief and joy.
Wendell Berry