{"author":"Wendell Berry","author_id":"Wendell+Berry","total_quotes":217,"quotes":[{"text":"It might seem to you that living in the woods on a riverbank would remove you from the modern world. But not if the river is navigable, as ours is. On pretty weekends in the summer, this riverbank is the very verge of the modern world. It is a seat in the front row, you might say. On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work.This resting involves traveling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right. They don't slow down for - or maybe even see - an old man in a rowboat raising his lines...I watch and I wonder and I think. I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom.","author":"Wendell Berry","tags":["economy","freedom","irony","modernity","rest","restlessness","slavery"],"id":767,"author_id":"Wendell+Berry"},{"text":"Living without expectations is hard but, when you can do it, good. Living without hope is harder, and that is bad. You have got to have hope, and you mustn’t shirk it. Love, after all, 'hopeth all things.' But maybe you must learn, and it is hard learning, not to hope out loud, especially for other people. You must not let your hope turn into expectation.","author":"Wendell Berry","tags":["expectations","hope"],"id":2135,"author_id":"Wendell+Berry"},{"text":"Grandmam came back from that distance in time that separates grandmothers from their grandchildren and made herself a mother to me.","author":"Wendell Berry","tags":["grandmother","mother"],"id":4864,"author_id":"Wendell+Berry"},{"text":"It is to be broken. It is to betorn open. It is not to bereached and come to rest inever. I turn against you,I break from you, I turn to you.We hurt, and are hurt,and have each other for healing.It is healing. It is never whole.","author":"Wendell Berry","tags":["marriage"],"id":5937,"author_id":"Wendell+Berry"},{"text":"The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance - almost is the revelation of ignorance. Our knowledge of the world instructs us first of all that the world is greater than our knowledge of it. To those who rejoice in the abundance and intricacy in Creation, this is a source of joy, as it is to those who rejoice in freedom...To those would-be solvers of 'the human problem,' who hope for knowledge equal to (capable of controlling) the world, it is a source of unremitting defeat and bewilderment. The evidence is overwhelming that knowledge does not solve 'the human problem.' Indeed, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests - with Genesis - that knowledge is the problem. Or perhaps we should say instead that all our problems tend to gather under two questions about knowledge: Having the ability and desire to know, how and what should we learn? And, having learned, how and for what should we use what we know? (pg. 183, People, Land, and Community).","author":"Wendell Berry","tags":["creation","humanity","ignorance","knowledge","learn"],"id":6292,"author_id":"Wendell+Berry"},{"text":"I loved the different voices all singing one song, the various tones and qualities, the passing lifts of feeling, rising up and going out forever. Old Man Profet, who was a different man on Sunday, used to draw out the notes at the ends of verses so he could listen to himself, and in fact it sounded pretty.","author":"Wendell Berry","tags":["community","singing"],"id":8629,"author_id":"Wendell+Berry"},{"text":"Rats and roaches live by competition under the law of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy. It is impossible not to notice how little the proponents of the ideal of competition have to say about honesty, which is the fundamental economic virtue, and how very little they have to say about community, compassion, and mutual help.","author":"Wendell Berry","tags":["community","economy","justice"],"id":12076,"author_id":"Wendell+Berry"},{"text":"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.","author":"Wendell Berry","tags":["wisdom"],"id":12689,"author_id":"Wendell+Berry"},{"text":"You may say that I am just another outdated old man complaining about progress and the changes of time. But, you see, I have well considered that possibility myself, and am prepared o submit to correction by anybody who cares about a community, who can show me how the world is improved by that community's dying.","author":"Wendell Berry","tags":["care","community","death","love","place"],"id":17282,"author_id":"Wendell+Berry"},{"text":"I thought that some of the hymns bespoke the true religion of the place. The people didn't really want to be saints of self-deprivation and hatred of the world. They knew that the world would sooner or later deprive them of all it had given them, but still they liked it. What they came together for was to acknowledge, just by coming, their losses and failures and sorrows, their need for comfort, their faith always needing to be greater, their wish (in spite of all words and acts to the contrary) to love one another and to forgive and be forgiven, their need for one another's help and company and divine gifts, their hope (and experience) of love surpassing death, their gratitude.","author":"Wendell Berry","tags":["church","community","singing"],"id":19333,"author_id":"Wendell+Berry"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":217,"pages":22,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}