Quote

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.

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
Things
Lives
People
Means
Order
Young
Enables
Firsts
Proper
First
Putting
Mean
Education
Important
Knowing

More quotes by Wendell Berry

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We can make ourselves whole only by accepting our partiality, by living within our limits, by being humans not by trying to be gods.
Wendell Berry
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You can't be a critic by simply being a griper. One has also to search out the examples of good work.
Wendell Berry
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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.
Wendell Berry
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I thought, He must forebear to reveal His power and glory by presenting Himself as Himself, and must be present only in the ordinary miracle of the existence of His creatures. Those who wish to see Him must see Him in the poor, the hungry, the hurt, the wordless creatures, the groaning and travailing beautiful world.
Wendell Berry
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The line that connects the bombing of civilian populations to the mountain removed by strip mining ... to the tortured prisoner seems to run pretty straight. We're living, it seems, in the culmination of a long warfare - warfare against human beings, other creatures and the Earth itself.
Wendell Berry
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Unless you absolutely have got to do it, don’t buy anything new.
Wendell Berry
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We will instead have to measure our economy by the health of the ecosystems and human communities where we do our work.
Wendell Berry
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Individualism is going around these days in uniform, handing out the party line on individualism.
Wendell Berry
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I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love.
Wendell Berry
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The primary motive for good care and good use of the land-community is always going to be affection, which is too often lacking.
Wendell Berry
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I’ve been thinking about that question about what city people can do. The main thing is to realize that country people can’t invent a better agriculture by ourselves. Industrial agriculture wasn’t invented by us, and we can’t uninvent it. We’ll need some help with that.
Wendell Berry
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It is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.
Wendell Berry
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It is wrong to condemn people for doing a thing and then offer no alternative but failure. A person could get mad about that.
Wendell Berry
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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.
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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The Christian gospel is a summons to peace, calling for justice beyond anger, mercy beyond justice, forgiveness beyond mercy, love beyond forgiveness.
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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But the only possible guarantee of the future is responsible behavior in the present.
Wendell Berry
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The earth is what we all have in common.
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