Wendell Berry Quotes

We live in an interdependent world. We depend on one another for prosperity.

A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members - among them the need to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy. (pg. 63, "Racism and the Economy")

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.

What keeps a nation strong is really the community. It is about people helping each other.

No one can survive on their own. Thinking you can is ridiculous, especially going into the middle half of the 21st century. To think you can do it alone is just ridiculous.

Christian society is like a bundle of sticks laid together, whereof one kindles another. Solitary men have fewest provocations to evil, but, again, fewest incitations to good. So much as doing good is better than not doing evil will I account Christian good-fellowship better than an hermitish and melancholy solitariness.

I do want the tax system to be efficient and be conducive to growth, which it is not.

We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Good night.

If we want the world to be a better place to live, we have to treat it as one unit. If we want economic growth to be pervasive, we have to make people its partners. If we want the process of development to be sustainable, we have to work with the environment.

The societies of consumption and squandering of material resources are incompatible with the idea of economic growth and a clean planet.

One of the greatest barriers to connection is the cultural importance we place on "going it alone." Somehow we've come to equate success with not needing anyone. Many of us are willing to extend a helping hand, but we're very reluctant to reach out for help when we need it ourselves. It's as if we've divided the world into "those who offer help" and "those who need help." The truth is that we are both.

We need others for our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Without others we are nothing. Our sense that we are an island, an independent, self-sufficient individual, bears no relation to reality. It is closer to the truth to picture ourself as a cell in the vast body of life, distinct yet intimately bound up with all living beings. We cannot exist without others, and they in turn are affected by everything we do. The idea that it is possible to secure our own welfare while neglecting the welfare of others, or even at the expense of others, is completely unrealistic.

Those who stay here can help those who go back, and those who go back can help those who stay here in the same way that when Jews go to Israel, the Jews in America help those in Israel and the Jews in Israel help those in America.

It is not more bigness that should be our goal. We must attempt, rather, to bring people back to...the warmth of community, to the worth of individual effort and responsibility...and of individuals working together as a community, to better their lives and their children's future.

Let ... individuals make the most of what God has given them, have their neighbors do the same, and then do all they can to serve each other. There is no use in one man, or one nation, to try to do or be everything. It is a good thing to be dependent on each other for something, it makes us civil and peaceable.

We believe that there is one economic lesson which our twentieth century experience has demonstrated conclusively-that America can no more survive and grow without big business than it can survive and grow without small business.... the two are interdependent. You cannot strengthen one by weakening the other, and you cannot add to the stature of a dwarf by cutting off the legs of a giant.

Communion is the law of growth, and homes only thrive when they sustain relations with each other.

In a world like this, media can help us to feel closer to one another, creating a sense of unity of the human family which can in turn inspire solidarity and serious efforts to ensure a more dignified life for all.

Our consumer-oriented economy wouldn't survive without economic growth. The whole mechanism depends on invention and insinuation of novelties, arousing new wants, seduction and temptation. This is the problem we face - much more than recapitalizing the banks. The question is: Is that kind of economy sustainable?

A Separation Psychology produces a Separation Sociology, a way of socializing with each other that encourages the entire human society to act as separate entities serving their own separate interests.

The promoters of the global economy...see nothing odd or difficult about unlimited economic growth or unlimited consumption in a limited world.

There are times when the welfare system may appear as an impediment to growth. Yet the drive for growth should always bear in mind the fact that people also need security

Neighbourliness is not a quality in other people, it is simply their claim on ourselves.

As society is only possible if everyone, while living his own life, at the same time helps others to live; if every individual is simultaneously means and end; if each individual's well-being is simultaneously the condition necessary to the well-being of others, it is evident that the contrast between I and thou, means and end, automatically is overcome.

Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own.