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If we can’t afford to take good care of the land that feeds us, we’re in an insurmountable mess.

Wendell Berry

Industrial agriculture characteristically proceeds by single solutions to single problems: If you want the most money from your land this year, grow the crops for which the market price is highest.
WENDELL BERRY

Agriculture Characteristically Industrial Problem Proceed Single Solution
I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself… something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins.
WENDELL BERRY

Above Boy Bright Else Humble Make Myself Origin Out Something
If conservationists will attempt to resume responsibility for their need to eat, they will be led back fairly directly to all their previous concerns for the welfare of nature.
WENDELL BERRY

Attempt Conservationist Eat Need Responsibility Resume
The two great aims of industrialism – replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy – seem close to fulfillment.
WENDELL BERRY

Aim Concentration Great Hand Industrialism People Plutocracy Replacement Small Technology Two Wealth
The atmosphere, the earth, the water and the water cycle – those things are good gifts.
WENDELL BERRY

Atmosphere Cycle Earth Gift Good Thing Those Water
To hear of a thousand deaths in war is terrible, and we ‘know’ that it is. But as it registers on our hearts, it is not more terrible than one death fully imagined.
WENDELL BERRY

Death Hear Know Terrible Thousand War
We’re all complicit in the things we may be trying to oppose. I’m complicit in the things that I’m trying to oppose.
WENDELL BERRY

All Complicit May Oppose Thing Try
It is a horrible fact that we can read in the daily paper, without interrupting our breakfast, numerical reckonings of death and destruction that ought to break our hearts or scare us out of our wits.
WENDELL BERRY

Breakfast Daily Fact Horrible Interrupting Paper Read
My belief is that the world and our life in it are conditional gifts.
WENDELL BERRY

Belief Condition Gift Life Our World
An economy genuinely local and neighborly offers to localities a measure of security that they cannot derive from a national or a global economy controlled by people who, by principle, have no local commitment.
WENDELL BERRY

Derive Economy Genuine Global Local Locality Measure National Neighbour Offer Security
I’ve had a good life, and was born to and among people I’ve admired and loved.
WENDELL BERRY

Admire Among Born Good Life Loved People
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

Affection Always Care Community Go Good Lack Land Motive Often Primary Use
Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.
WENDELL BERRY

Argument Berry Better Cup Dew Drawn Pick Red Rise Than Wet
Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart.
WENDELL BERRY

Afraid Awake Beat Cover Head Hear Heart Lying Own Prayer
If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free, for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far:
WENDELL BERRY

Been Deep Entirely Ever Far Free Idea Life Schooling Set So Still
Annual plants are nature’s emergency medical service, seeded in sounds and scars to hold the land until the perennial cover is re-established.
WENDELL BERRY

Annual Cover Emergency Hold Medical Nature Perennial Plant Scar Seed Service Sound Until

If we can’t afford to take good care of the land that feeds us, we’re in an insurmountable mess.

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If we can’t afford to take good care of the land that feeds us, we’re in an insurmountable mess.

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Popular Authors

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