Quote

The wrecking ball is characteristic of our way with materials. We 'cannot afford' to log a forest selectively, to mine without destroying topography, or to farm without catastrophic soil erosion. A production-oriented economy can indeed live in this way, but only so long as production lasts.

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
Cannot
Environmental
Destroying
Catastrophic
Live
Balls
Characteristics
Erosion
Without
Indeed
Afford
Oriented
Long
Mines
Forests
Sustainability
Way
Mine
Production
Characteristic
Materials
Productions
Farm
Selectively
Economy
Soil
Farms
Wrecking
Lasts
Ball
Forest
Topography

More quotes by Wendell Berry

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When the self is ones exclusive subject and limit, reference and measure, one has no choice but to make a world of words.
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There are some things the arrogant mind does not see it is blinded by its vision of what it desires.
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And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present
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It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.
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We can fight the global economy with a strong local economy.
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You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out - perhaps a little at a time.' And how long is that going to take?' I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.' That could be a long time.' I will tell you a further mystery,' he said. 'It may take longer.
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They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works—although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself. What they didn’t see was that it is beautiful, and that some of the greatest beauties are the briefest.
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The law is meant to work for justice. But people who know themselves know that, at some point, justice had better be mitigated by mercy. And you don't get to mercy by a legal principle. You get to mercy by way of imagination, sympathy, tenderness of heart - which are not weaknesses.
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Without animals, something essential is removed from the minds of the farmers.
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A Sustainable Agriculture does not deplete soils or people.
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I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods.
Wendell Berry
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The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and wasteful.
Wendell Berry
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We cannot comprehend what comprehends us.
Wendell Berry
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The language that reveals also obscures.
Wendell Berry
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The presence of the present has become insistent, undeniable, and I dare not look away.
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The only time I've been arrested was in opposing the Marble Hill nuclear power plant in Indiana. That was in 1979.
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Violence breeds violence. Acts of violence committed in justice or in affirmation of rights or in defense of peace do not end violence. They prepare and justify its continuation.
Wendell Berry
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To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.
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A good community insures itself by trust, by good faith and good will, by mutual help. A good community, in other words, is a good local economy.
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The most insistent and formidable concern of agriculture, wherever it is taken seriously, is the distinct individuality of every farm, every field on every farm, every farm family, and every creature on every farm.
Wendell Berry