(b. 1934– )
poet, essayist, farmer, and novelist
Wendell Berry
One thing we do know, that we dare not forget, is that better solutions than ours have at times been made by people with much less information than we have. We know too, from the study of agriculture, that the same information, tools, and techniques that in one farmer’s hands will ruin land, in another’s will save and improve it.
“People, Land, and Community,” in The Art of the Commonplace (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2002), 183.
To think better, to think like the best humans, we are probably going to have to learn again to judge a person’s intelligence, not by the ability to recite facts, but by the good order or harmoniousness of his or her surroundings.
“People, Land, and Community,” in The Art of the Commonplace (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2002), 192.
The young are born to the human condition more than to their time, and they face mainly the same trials and obligations as their elders have faced.
“Family Work,” in The Gift of Good Land (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1981), 160.