Wendell Berry Quotes About Neighbors

Quotes about: Neighbors

• People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.

  Wendell Berry

  Lonely, Hate, Drug Use

  Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.61, Counterpoint

• If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors' prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities - and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared. (pg. 59, "Racism and the Economy")

  Wendell Berry

  Real, Animal, Air

  Wendell Berry (2010). “The Hidden Wound”, p.129, Counterpoint Press

• It is better to buy from a small, privately owned local store than from a chain store. It is better to buy a good product than a bad one. Do not buy anything you don't need. Do as much as you can for yourself. If you cannot do something for yourself, see if you have a neighbor who can do it for you. Do everything you can to see that your money stays as long as possible in the local community.

  Wendell Berry

  Long, Community, Environmental

  Wendell Berry (1993). “Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays”, Pantheon

• A viable neighborhood is a community: and a viable community is made up of neighbors who cherish and protect what they have in common.

  Wendell Berry

  Community, Environmental, Common

  Wendell Berry (2001). “In the Presence of Fear: Three Essays for a Changed World”

• We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true. And if we offend gravely enough against what we know to be true, as by failing badly enough to deal affectionately and responsibly with our land and our neighbors, truth will retaliate with ugliness, poverty, and disease.

  Wendell Berry

  Land, Disease, Poverty

  Wendell Berry (2012). “It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture & Other Essays”, p.27, Counterpoint Press

• Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
  vacation with pay. Want more
  of everything ready-made. Be afraid
  to know your neighbors and to die.
  And you will have a window in your head.
  Not even your future will be a mystery
  any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
  and shut away in a little drawer.
  When they want you to buy something
  they will call you. When they want you
  to die for profit they will let you know.

  Wendell Berry

  Vacation, Mind, Cards

  Wendell Berry (2013). “A Country of Marriage: Poems”, p.16, Counterpoint Press

• Community, then, is an indispensable term in any discussion of the connection between people and land. A healthy community is a form that includes all the local things that are connected by the larger, ultimately mysterious form of the Creation. In speaking of community, then, we are speaking of a complex connection not only among human beings or between humans and their homeland but also between human economy and nature, between forest or prairie and field or orchard, and between troublesome creatures and pleasant ones. All neighbors are included.

  Wendell Berry

  Land, People, Community

  Wendell Berry (1993). “Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays”, Pantheon

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