Wendell Berry

[T]he hierarchy of power is not the same as the hierarchy of value. A good human is higher than the animals on both scales; an evil human is high on the scale of power, but at the very bottom of the scale of values.

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As industrial technology advances and enlarges, and in the process assumes greater social, economic, and political force, it carries people away from where they belong by history, culture, deeds, association, and affection.

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When the self is one’s exclusive subject and limit, reference and measure, one has no choice but to make a world of words.

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Reverence makes it possible to be whole, though ignorant. It is the wholeness of understanding.

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The form of a poem is invisible. A poem is not an “object.” This is hard to accept in a mechanical age.

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The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

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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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The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance—almost is the revelation of ignorance.

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Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous.

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The earth is what we all have in common.

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To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.

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In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world.

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And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.

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Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands.

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I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

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