Background Image
The Religion And The Environmentalism Of The Highly Industrialized Countries Are At Bottom A Sham, Because They Make It Their Business To Fight Against Something That They Do Not Really Wish To Destroy. We All Live By Robbing Nature, But Our Standard Of Living Demands That The Robbery Shall Continue. We Must Achieve The Character And Acquire The Skills To Live Much Poorer Than We Do.
-Wendell Berry
Please Wait....
Translating....

The Religion And The

Wendell Berry
The Religion And The Environmentalism Of The Highly Industrialized Countries Are At Bottom A Sham, Because They Make It Their Business To Fight Against Something That They Do Not Really Wish To Destroy. We All Live By Robbing Nature, But Our Standard Of Living Demands That The Robbery Shall Continue. We Must Achieve The Character And Acquire The Skills To Live Much Poorer Than We Do.
Views: 30460
Topic
Country
Character
Fighting
More From Wendell Berry
The Question Before Me, Now That I Am Old, Is Not How To Be Dead, Which I Know From Enough Practice, But How To Be Alive, As These Worn Hills Still Tell, And Some Paintings Of Paul Cezanne, And This Mere Singing Wren, Who Thinks He's Alive Forever, This Instant, And May Be.
Thinking
Practice
Forever
There Are Endless Ways To Amuse Oneself And Be Idle, And Most Of Them Lie Outside The Woods. I Assume That When A Man Goes To The Woods He Goes Because He Needs To. I Think He Is Drawn To The Wilderness Much As He Is Drawn To A Woman: It Is, In Its Way, His Opposite. It Is As Far As Possible Unlike His Home Or His Work Or Anything He Will Ever Manufacture. For That Reason He Can Take From It A Solace-an Understanding Of Himself, Of What He Needs And What He Can Do Without-such As He Can Find Nowhere Else.
Lying
Home
Men
Professional Standards, The Standards Of Ambition And Selfishness, Are Always Sliding Downward Toward Expense, Ostentation, And Mediocrity. They Tend Always To Narrow The Ground Of Judgment. But Amateur Standards, The Standards Of Love, Are Always Straining Upward Toward The Humble And The Best. They Enlarge The Ground Of Judgment. The Context Of Love Is The World.
Life
Humble
Ambition
Rats And Roaches Live By Competition Under The Laws Of Supply And Demand; It Is The Privilege Of Human Beings To Live Under The Laws Of Justice And Mercy.
Law
Justice
Competition
Long Live Gravity! Long Live Stupidity, Error, And Greed In The Palaces Of Fantasy Capitalism!
Errors
Long
Stupidity
All Right, Every Day Ain't Going To Be The Best Day Of Your Life, Don't Worry About That. If You Stick To It You Hold The Possibility Open That You Will Have Better Days.
Worry
Sticks
Better Days
Don't Own So Much Clutter That You Will Be Relieved To See Your House Catch Fire.
Fire
House
Relieved
The Freedom Of Affluence Opposes And Contradicts The Freedom Of Community Life.
Community
Affluence
I Dream Of A Quiet Man / Who Explains Nothing And Defends Nothing, But Only Knows / Where The Rarest Wildflowers / Are Blooming, And Who Goes, / And Finds That He Is Smiling / Not By His Own Will.
Dream
Men
Wildflowers
Individualism Is Going Around These Days In Uniform, Handing Out The Party Line On Individualism.
Party
Lines
Uniforms
No Individual Life Is An End In Itself. One Can Live Fully Only By Participating Fully In The Succession Of The Generations, In Death As Well As In Life. Some Would Say (and I Am One Of Them) That We Can Live Fully Only By Making Ourselves Answerable To The Claims Of Eternity As To Those Of Time.
Environmental
Generations
Life Is
The Hierarchy Of Power Is Not The Same As The Hierarchy Of Value. A Good Human Is Higher Than The Animals On Both Scales; An Evil Human Is High On The Scale Of Power, But At The Very Bottom Of The Scale Of Values.
Animal
Evil
Hierarchy
We Learn From Our Gardens To Deal With The Most Urgent Question Of The Time: How Much Is Enough?
Time
Learning
Garden
There Is No Sense And No Sanity In Objecting To The Desecration Of The Flag While Tolerating And Justifying And Encouraging As A Daily Business The Desecration Of The Country For Which It Stands.
Inspiring
Country
Flags
It Is A Fact That The Entire Kentucky River System, Which The Central Part Of The State Complacently Depends Upon For Its Future Water, Is Deteriorating Rapidly Because Of Strip Mining, Because Of Bad Farming, Because Of Industrial And Agricultural Pollutants, Because Of Urban Sewage. It Is Deteriorating, That Is To Say, Because Almost Nobody Cares, Or Cares To Know, Where Water Comes From, So Long As It Keeps Coming.
Kentucky
Rivers
Long
The 'environmental Crisis' Has Happened Because The Human Household Or Economy Is In Conflict At Almost Every Point With The Household Of Nature. We Have Built Our Household On The Assumption That The Natural Household Is Simple And Can Be Simply Used. We Have Assumed Increasingly Over The Last Five Hundred Years That Nature Is Merely A Supply Of 'raw Materials,' And That We May Safely Possess Those Materials By Taking Them.... And So We Will Be Wrong If We Attempt To Correct What We Perceive As 'environmental' Problems Without Correcting The Economic Oversimplification That Caused Them.
Inspiring
Simple
Years
Obviously, If Christianity Is Going To Survive As More Than A Respecter And Comforter Of Profitable Inquiries, Then Christians, Regardless Of Their Organizations, Are Going To Have To Interest Themselves In Economy-which Is To Say, In Nature And In Work. They Are Going To Have To Give Workable Answers To Those Who Say We Cannot Live Without This Economy That Is Destroying Us And Our World, Who See The Murder Of Creation As The Only Way Of Life.
Christian
Organization
Our World
It's Kind Of Alarming For Me To Realize That, When I'm Writing Stories About Times I Remember, It's Already Historical Fiction.
Writing
Historical
Fiction
We Are Living Even Now Among Punishments And Ruins.
Punishment
Ruins
The Christian Gospel Is A Summons To Peace, Calling For Justice Beyond Anger, Mercy Beyond Justice, Forgiveness Beyond Mercy, Love Beyond Forgiveness.
Christian
Justice
Calling
We Don't Know How To Use Energy Or What To Use It For. And We Cannot Restrain Ourselves. Our Time Is Characterized As Much By The Abuse And Waste Of Human Energy As It Is By The Abuse And Waste Of Fossil Fuel Energy.
Abuse
Energy
Fuel
Invest In The Millennium. Plant Sequoias.
Plant
Millennium
A Liberal Education Rests On The Assumption That Nature And Human Nature Do Not Change Very Much Or Very Fast And That One Therefore Needs To Understand The Past.
Past
Needs
Assumption
We Can Grow Good Wheat And Make Good Bread Only If We Understand That We Do Not Live By Bread Alone.
Bread
Wheat
Live By
But Our Waste Problem Is Not The Fault Only Of Producers. It Is The Fault Of An Economy That Is Wasteful From Top To Bottom-a Symbiosis Of An Unlimited Greed At The Top And A Lazy, Passive, And Self-indulgent Consumptiveness At The Bottom-and All Of Us Are Involved In It.
Self
Greed
Lazy
The Poem Is Important, But Not More Than The People Whose Survival It Serves.
People
Survival
Important
History Leaves No Doubt That Among Of The Most Regrettable Crimes Committed By Human Beings Have Been Committed By Those Human Beings Who Thought Of Themselves As Civilized. What, We Must Ask, Does Our Civilization Possess That Is Worth Defending? One Thing Worth Defending, I Suggest, Is The Imperative To Imagine The Lives Of Beings Who Are Not Ourselves And Are Not Like Ourselves: Animals, Plants, Gods, Spirits, People Of Other Countries, Other Races, People Of The Other Sex, Places And Enemies.
Country
Sex
Animal
The Mercy Of The World Is You Don't Know What's Going To Happen.
Rap
Tomorrow May Never Come
World
There Are Two Laws That We Had Better Take To Be Absolute. The First Is That As We Cannot Exempt Ourselves From Living In This World, Then If We Wish To Live, We Cannot Exempt Ourselves From Using The World. If We Cannot Exempt Ourselves From Use, Then We Must Deal With The Issues Raised By Use. And So The Second Law Is That If We Want To Continue Living, We Cannot Exempt Use From Care.
Inspiring
Law
Two
Odd As I Am Sure It Will Appear To Some, I Can Think Of No Better Form Of Personal Involvement In The Cure Of The Environment Than That Of Gardening. A Person Who Is Growing A Garden, If He Is Growing It Organically, Is Improving A Piece Of The World. He Is Producing Something To Eat, Which Makes Him Somewhat Independent Of The Grocery Business, But He Is Also Enlarging, For Himself, The Meaning Of Food And The Pleasure Of Eating.
Independent
Garden
Thinking
The World Is Not Given By Our Fathers But Borrowed From Our Children.
Children
Father
World
Love Changes, And In Change Is True.
[all The Ancient Wisdom] Tells Us That Work Is Necessary To Us, As Much A Part Of Our Condition As Mortality; That Good Work Is Our Salvation And Our Joy; That Shoddy Or Dishonest Or Self-serving Work Is Our Curse And Our Doom. We Have Tried To Escape The Sweat And Sorrow Promised In Genesis - Only To Find That, In Order To Do So, We Must Forswear Love And Excellence, Health And Joy. (pg. 44, "the Unsettling Of America")
Order
Sweat
America
If You Don't Know Where You Are, You Don't Know Who You Are.
Journey
Hiking
Where We Come
A Proper Education Enables Young People To Put Their Lives In Order, Which Means Knowing What Things Are More Important Than Other Things; It Means Putting First Things First.
Education
Mean
Order
The Soil Under The Grass Is Dreaming Of A Young Forest, And Under The Pavement The Soil Is Dreaming Of Grass.
Dream
Pavement
Soil
So It Is That The Life Force May Take Possession Of A Man-- So That In The End He May Be Possessed By Something Greater, No Longer At All Belonging To Himself.
Men
May
Ends
To Be Sane In A Mad Time Is Bad For The Brain, Worse For The Heart.
Heart
Mad
Brain
We Seem To Know That International Wars Tend Not To Stop With Their Formal "peace Treaties." We Seem Not To Have Thought Enough About The Difference Between The Large Official Events Of Political And Military History And Their Overflow Both Into Recognized Effects And Into The Lives Of Unofficial People Who Suffer Them.
War
Military
Differences
... It Is Not A Crisis Of Our Environs Or Surroundings; It Is A Crisis Of Our Lives As Individuals, As Family Members, As Community Members, And As Citizens. We Have An 'environmental Crisis' Because We Have Consented To An Economy In Which By Eating, Drinking, Working, Resting, Traveling, And Enjoying Ourselves We Are Destroying The Natural, God-given World.
Drinking
Community
Environmental
There Are Moments When The Heart Is Generous, And Then It Knows That For Better Or Worse Our Lives Are Woven Together Here, One With One Another And With The Place And All The Living Things.
Heart
Together
Woven
Invest In The Millennium. Plant Sequoias. Say That Your Main Crop Is The Forest That You Did Not Plant, That You Will Not Live To Harvest.
Forests
Harvest
Plant
The River And The Garden Have Been The Foundations Of My Economy Here. Of The Two I Have Liked The River Best. It Is Wonderful To Have The Duty Of Being On The River The First And Last Thing Every Day. I Have Loved It Even In The Rain. Sometimes I Have Loved It Most In The Rain.
Rain
Garden
Two
Once Plants And Animals Were Raised Together On The Same Farm - Which Therefore Neither Produced Unmanageable Surpluses Of Manure, To Be Wasted And To Pollute The Water Supply, Nor Depended On Such Quantities Of Commercial Fertilizer. The Genius Of American Farm Experts Is Very Well Demonstrated Here: They Can Take A Solution And Divide It Neatly Into Two Problems.
Animal
Two
Water
O Thou, Far Off And Here, Whole And Broken, Who In Necessity And In Bounty Wait, Whose Truth Is Light And Dark, Mute Though Spoken, By Thy Wide Grace Show Me Thy Narrow Gate.
Dark
Garden
Light
The Music, While It Lasted, Brought A New World Into Being.
World
New World
Eaters Must Understand That Eating Takes Place Inescapably In The World, That It Is Inescapably An Agricultural Act, And That How We Eat Determines, To A Considerable Extent, How The World Is Used.
World
Eating
Used
We Must See That It Is Foolish, Sinful And Suicidal To Destroy The Health Of Nature For The Sake Of An Economy That Is Really Not An Economy At All But Merely A Financial System, One That Is Unnatural, Undemocratic, Sacrilegious, And Ephemeral.
Suicidal
Ephemeral
Sake
The Miraculous Is Not Extraordinary But The Common Mode Of Existence. It Is Our Daily Bread. Whoever Really Has Considered The Lilies Of The Field Or The Birds Of The Air And Pondered The Improbability Of Their Existence In This Warm World Within The Cold And Empty Stellar Distances Will Hardly Balk At The Turning Of Water Into Wine Which Was, After All, A Very Small Miracle. We Forget The Greater And Still Continuing Miracle By Which Water (with Soil And Sunlight) Is Turned Into Grapes.
Distance
Wine
Air
One Cannot Be Aware Both Of The History Of Christian War And Of The Contents Of The Gospels Without Feeling That Something Is Amiss.
Christian
War
Feelings
The Earth Is What We All Have In Common.
Nature
Earth Day
Environmental
Under The Rule Of The "free Market" Ideology, We Have Gone Through Two Decades Of An Energy Crisis Without An Effective Energy Policy. Because Of An Easy And Thoughtless Reliance On Imported Oil, We Have No Adequate Policy For The Conservation Of Gasoline And Other Petroleum Products. We Have No Adequate Policy For The Development Or Use Of Other, Less Harmful Forms Of Energy. We Have No Adequate System Of Public Transportation.
Two
Oil
Energy
Don't Pray For The Rain To Stop; Pray For Good Luck Fishing When The River Floods.
Rain
Good Luck
Fishing
Laugh. Laughter Is Immeasurable. Be Joyful Though You Have Considered All The Facts.
Laughter
Laughing
Facts
Humans, Like All Other Creatures, Must Make A Difference; Otherwise, They Cannot Live. But Unlike Other Creatures, Humans Must Make A Choice As To The Kind And Scale Of Difference They Make. If They Choose To Make Too Small A Difference, They Diminish Their Humanity. If They Choose To Make Too Great A Difference, They Diminish Nature, And Narrow Their Subsequent Choices; Ultimately, They Diminish Or Destroy Themselves. Nature, Then, Is Not Only Our Source But Also Our Limit And Measure.
Differences
Choices
Humanity
The Pleasure Of Eating Should Be An Extensive Pleasure, Not That Of The Mere Gourmet. People Who Know The Garden In Which Their Vegetables Have Grown And Know That The Garden Is Healthy Will Remember The Beauty Of The Growing Plants, Perhaps In The Dewy First Light Of Morning When Gardens Are At Their Best. Such A Memory Involves Itself With The Food And Is One Of The Pleasures Of Eating. (pg. 326, The Pleasures Of Eating)
Morning
Memories
Garden
My Wish Simply Is To Live My Life As Fully As I Can. In Both Our Work And Our Leisure, I Think, We Should Be So Employed. And In Our Time This Means That We Must Save Ourselves From The Products That We Are Asked To Buy In Order, Ultimately, To Replace Ourselves.
Life
Positive
Passion
Urban Conservationists May Feel Entitled To Be Unconcerned About Food Production Because They Are Not Farmers. But They Can't Be Let Off So Easily, For They Are All Farming By Proxy.
May
Urban
Farming
We Clasp The Hands Of Those Who Go Before Us, And The Hands Of Those Who Come After Us; We Enter The Little Circle Of Each Other's Arms, And The Larger Circle Of Lovers Whose Hands Are Joined In A Dance, And The Larger Circle Of All Creatures, Passing In And Out Of Life, Who Move Also In A Dance, To A Music So Subtle And Vast That No Ear Hears It Except In Fragments.
Moving
Hands
Circles
Supporters Of The War Are Constantly Asking Those Who Oppose It: Why Don't You Deplore The Wrongs And Atrocities Committed By The Other Side? The Answer, So Far As I Am Concerned, Is That I Do Deplore The Wrongs And Atrocities Committed By The Other Side. But I Am Responsible For The Wrongs And Atrocities Committed By Our Side. And I Am No Longer Able To Participate In The Assumption That Atrocities Committed By Remote Control Are Less Objectionable Than Those Committed At Arm's Length. I Am Most Concerned With American Obstacles To Peace Because I Am An American.
War
Atrocities Committed
Asking
This, I Thought, Is What Is Meant By 'thy Will Be Done' In The Lord's Prayer, Which I Had Prayed Time And Again Without Thinking About It. It Means That Your Will And God's Will May Not Be The Same. It Means There's A Good Possibility That You Won't Get What You Pray For. It Means That In Spite Of Your Prayers You Are Going To Suffer.
Prayer
Mean
Thinking
Do Unto Those Downstream As You Would Have Those Upstream Do Unto You.
Lakes
Sea
Fishing
Ask The Questions That Have No Answers. Invest In The Millenium. Plant Sequoias.
Answers
Plant
Asks
We Can Make Ourselves Whole Only By Accepting Our Partiality, By Living Within Our Limits, By Being Humans Not By Trying To Be Gods.
Simple
Trying
Limits
This Is A Book About Heaven. I Know It Now. It Floats Among Us Like A Cloud And Is The Realest Thing We Know And The Least To Be Captured, The Least To Be Possessed By Anybody For Himself. It Is Like A Grain Of Mustard Seed, Which You Cannot See Among The Crumbs Of Earth Where It Lies. It Is Like The Reflection Of The Trees On The Water.
Lying
Book
Reflection
Outdoors We Are Confronted Everywhere With Wonders; We See That The Miraculous Is Not Extraordinary, But The Common Mode Of Existence. It Is Our Daily Bread.
Bread
Common
Wonder
The Cloud Is Free Only To Go With The Wind. The Rain Is Free Only In Falling.
Freedom
Fall
Rain
There Are, It Seems, Two Muses: The Muse Of Inspiration, Who Gives Us Inarticulate Visions And Desires, And The Muse Of Realization, Who Returns Again And Again To Say, 'it Is Yet More Difficult Than You Thought.' It May Be That When We No Longer Know What To Do, We Have Come To Our Real Work And When We No Longer Know Which Way To Go, We Have Begun Our Real Journey.
Real
Inspiration
Journey
How Would You Describe The Difference Between Modern War And Modern Industry-between Say, Bombing And Strip Mining, Or Between Chemical Warfare And Chemical Manufacturing? The Difference Seems To Be Only That In War The Victimization Of Humans Is Directly Intentional And In Industry It Is "accepted" As A "trade-off." Were The Catastrophes Of Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, And The Exxon Valdez Episodes Of War Or Of Peace? They Were In Fact, Peacetime Acts Of Aggression, Intentional To The Extent That The Risks Were Known And Ignored.
War
Differences
Risk
Love Is What Carries You, For It Is Always There, Even In The Dark, Or Most In The Dark, But Shining Out At Times Like Gold Stitches In A Piece Of Embroidery.
Love
Dark
Shining
He Never Complained. He Seemed To Have No Instinct For The Making Much Of Oneself That Complaining Requires.
Complaining
Instinct
Oneself
The Consumer Wants Food To Be As Cheap As Possible. The Producer Wants It To Be As Expensive As Possible. Both Want It To Involve As Little Labor As Possible. And So The Standards Of Cheapness And Convenience, Which Are Irresistibly Simplifying And Therefore Inevitably Exploitive, Have Been Substituted For The Standard Of Health (of Both People And Land), Which Would Enforce Consideration Of Essential Complexities.
Land
People
Essentials
The Issue Here Really Is Not Whether International Trade Shall Be Free But Whether Or Not It Makes Any Sense For A Country - Or, For That Matter, A Region - To Destroy Its Own Capacity To Produce Its Own Food. How Can A Government, Entrusted With The Safety And Health Of Its People, Conscientiously Barter Away In The Name Of An Economic Idea That People's Ability To Feed Itself? And If People Lose Their Ability To Feed Themselves, How Can They Be Said To Be Free?
Country
Names
Ideas
Never Forget: We Are Alive Within Mysteries.
Life
Alive
Never Forget
There Are Some Things The Arrogant Mind Does Not See; It Is Blinded By Its Vision Of What It Desires.
Mind
Vision
Desire
Under The Pavement The Dirt Is Dreaming Of Grass.
Dream
Dirt
Pavement
It Is, Of Course, One Of The Miracles Of Science That The Germs That Used To Be In Our Food Have Been Replaced By Poisons.
Miracle
Germs
Poison
When The Mind's An Empty Room The Clear Days Come.
Empty Rooms
Mind
Clear Day
When Humans Act Like Animals, They Become The Most Dangerous Of Animals To Themselves And Other Humans, And This Is Because Of Another Critical Difference Between Humans And Animals: Whereas Animals Are Usually Restrained By The Limits Of Physical Appetites, Humans Have Mental Appetites That Can Be Far More Gross And Capacious Than Physical Ones. Only Humans Squander And Hoard, Murder And Pillage Because Of Notions.
Animal
Differences
Limits
I Took Her Into Bed With Me And Propped Myself Up With Pillows Against The Headboard To Let Her Nurse. As She Nursed And The Milk Came, She Began A Little Low Contented Sort Of Singing. I Would Feel Milk And Love Flowing From Me To Her As Once It Had Flowed To Me. It Emptied Me. As The Baby Fed, I Seemed Slowly To Grow Empty Of Myself, As If In The Presence Of That Long Flow Of Love Even Grief Could Not Stand.
Baby
Grief
Nurse
No Matter How Much One May Love The World As A Whole, One Can Live Fully In It Only By Living Responsibly In Some Small Part Of It. Where We Live And Who We Live There With Define The Terms Of Our Relationship To The World And To Humanity. We Thus Come Again To The Paradox That One Can Become Whole Only By The Responsible Acceptance Of One's Partiality.
Acceptance
Humanity
World
It May Be That When We No Longer Know... Which Way To Go We Have Begun Our Real Journey. The Mind That Is Not Baffled Is Not Employed. The Impeded Stream Is The One That Sings.
Real
Journey
Mind
A Protest Meeting On The Issue Of Environmental Abuse Is Not A Convocation Of Accusers, It Is A Convocation Of The Guilty. The Realization Ought To Clear The Smog Of Self-righteousness That Has Always Conventionally Hovered Over These Occasions, And Let Us See The Work That Is To Be Done.
Self
Issues
Abuse
...and We Pray, Not For New Earth Or Heaven, But To Be Quiet In Heart, And In Eye Clear. What We Need Is Here.
Heart
Eye
Heaven
In Kentucky, We're Destroying Mountains, Including Their Soils And Forests, In Order To Get At The Coal. In Other Words, We're Destroying A Permanent Value In Order To Get At An Almost Inconceivably Transient Value. That Coal Has A Value Only If And When It Is Burnt. And After It Is Burnt, It Is A Pollutant And A Waste-a Burden.
Kentucky
Order
Ifs And
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.
Inspirational
Wise
Memories
I Don't Think It Is Enough Appreciated How Much An Outdoor Book The Bible Is. It Is A "hypaethral Book," Such As Thoreau Talked About - A Book Open To The Sky. It Is Best Read And Understood Outdoors, And The Farther Outdoors The Better. Or That Has Been My Experience Of It. Passages That Within Walls Seem Improbable Or Incredible, Outdoors Seem Merely Natural. This Is Because Outdoors We Are Confronted Everywhere With Wonders; We See That The Miraculous Is Not Extraordinary But The Common Mode Of Existence. It Is Our Daily Bread.
Wall
Book
Thinking
Prayer Is Like Lying Awake At Night, Afraid, With Your Head Under The Cover, Hearing Only The Beating Of Your Own Heart. It Is Like A Bird That Has Blundered Down The Flue And Is Caught Indoors And Flutters At The Windowpanes. It Is Like Standing A Long Time On A Cold Day, Knocking At A Shut Door.
Prayer
Lying
Heart
Having Hope Is Hard; Harder When You Get Older.
Having Hope
Harder
Hard
The Promoters Of The Global Economy...see Nothing Odd Or Difficult About Unlimited Economic Growth Or Unlimited Consumption In A Limited World.
Growth
World
Odd
We Are Destroying Our Country - I Mean Our Country Itself, Our Land. This Is A Terrible Thing To Know, But It Is Not A Reason For Despair Unless We Decide To Continue The Destruction. If We Decide To Continue The Destruction, That Will Not Be Because We Have No Other Choice. This Destruction Is Not Necessary. It Is Not Inevitable, Except That By Our Submissiveness We Make It So.
Country
Mean
Land
There Are No Unsacred Places; There Are Only Sacred Places And Desecrated Places.
Sacred
Sacred Places
Gathering Places
Only By Restoring The Broken Connections Can We Be Healed. Connection Is Health. And What Our Society Does Its Best To Disguise From Us Is How Ordinary, How Commonly Attainable, Health Is. We Lose Our Health -- And Create Profitable Diseases And Dependencies -- By Failing To See The Direct Connections Between Living And Eating, Eating And Working, Working And Loving.
Broken
Ordinary
Connections
Action Can Only Be Understood In Relation To Place; Only By Staying In Place Can The Imagination Conceive Or Understand Action In Terms Of Consequence, Of Cause And Effect. The Meaning Of Action In Time Is Inseparable From Its Meaning In Place.
Imagination
Causes
Action
To Live, We Must Daily Break The Body And Shed The Blood Of Creation. When We Do This Knowingly, Lovingly, Skillfully, Reverently, It Is A Sacrament. When We Do It Ignorantly, Greedily, Clumsily, Destructively, It Is A Desecration. In Such Desecration We Condemn Ourselves To Spiritual And Moral Loneliness, And Others To Want.
Spiritual
Loneliness
Food
True Solitude Is Found In The Wild Places, Where One Is Without Human Obligation. One's Inner Voices Become Audible... In Consequence, One Responds More Clearly To Other Lives.
Wild Places
Voice
Solitude
I Think The Issues Of Identity Mostly Are Poppycock. We Are What We Have Done, Which Includes Our Promises, Includes Our Hopes, But Promises First.
Thinking
Issues
Promise
Sometimes I Knew In All My Mind And Heart Why I Had Done What I Had Done, And I Welcomed The Sacrifice. But There Were Times Too When I Lived In A Desert And Felt No Joy And Saw No Hope And Could Not Remember My Old Feelings. Then I Lived By Faith Alone, Faith Without Hope. What Good Did I Get From It? I Got To Have Love In My Heart.
Heart
Sacrifice
Joy
Novelty Is A New Kind Of Loneliness.
Fear
Loneliness
Novelty
I Don't Think I Had Even Begun To Have An Idea Where I Was Going, But Wherever It Was, That Was Where I Wanted To Go.
Thinking
Ideas
Wanted
Unexpected Wonders Happen, Not On Schedule, Or When You Expect Or Want Them To Happen, But If You Keep Hanging Around, They Do Happen.
Schedules
Want
Unexpected
We Are Living In The Most Destructive And, Hence, The Most Stupid Period Of The History Of Our Species.
Stupid
Periods
Species
As I Age In The World It Will Rise And Spread, And Be For This Place Horizon And Orison, The Voice Of Its Winds. I Have Made Myself A Dream To Dream Of Its Rising, That Has Gentled My Nights. Let Me Desire And Wish Well The Life These Trees May Live When I No Longer Rise In The Mornings To Be Pleased With The Green Of Them Shining, And Their Shadows On The Ground, And The Sound Of The Wind In Them.
Dream
Morning
Night
We Had Entered An Era Of Limitlessness, Or The Illusion Thereof, And This In Itself Is A Sort Of Wonder. My Grandfather Lived A Life Of Limits, Both Suffered And Strictly Observed, In A World Of Limits. I Learned Much Of That World From Him And Others, And Then I Changed; I Entered The World Of Labor-saving Machines And Of Limitless Cheap Fossil Fuel. It Would Take Me Years Of Reading, Thought, And Experience To Learn Again That In This World Limits Are Not Only Inescapable But Indispensable.
Reading
Years
Grandfather
Specialization Is The Great Evil Of Civilization.
Civilization
Evil
Specialization
We Have Lived Our Lives By The Assumption That What Was Good For Us Would Be Good For The World. We Have Been Wrong. We Must Change Our Lives So That It Will Be Possible To Live By The Contrary Assumption, That What Is Good For The World Will Be Good For Us. And That Requires That We Make The Effort To Know The World And Learn What Is Good For It.
Effort
Would Be
World
My Label Is Just "good Farming", Which Isn't Something You Can Put On A T-shirt.
Labels
T Shirt
Farming
We Are Going To Have To Gather Up The Fragments Of Knowledge And Responsibilities That Have Been Turned Over To Governments, Corporations, And Specialists, And Put Those Fragments Back Together Again In Our Own Minds And In Our Families And Household And Neighborhoods.
Responsibility
Government
Together Again
There’s Nothing Under The Ground That’s Worth More Than The Little Layer Of Topsoil Sitting On Top Of It.
Sitting
Littles
Layers
You Cannot Save The Land Apart From The People, Or The People Apart From The Land.
Land
People
Invest In The Millennium. Plant Sequoias. Say That Your Main Crop Is The Forest That You Did Not Plant, That You Will Not Live To Harvest. Say That The Leaves Are Harvested When They Have Rotted Into The Mold. Call That Profit. Prophesy Such Returns. Put Your Faith In The Two Inches Of Humus That Will Build Under The Trees Every Thousand Years.
Two
Years
Tree
It Surely Is Far Better To Be Disliked By Somebody You Don't Love Than By Somebody You Do. Even So, I Mind. Even So, Failing To Love Somebody Is A Failure.
Mind
Failing
Commercial Conquest Is Far More Thorough And Final Than Military Defeat.
Military
Finals
Defeat
Under The Discipline Of Unity, Knowledge And Morality Come Together. No Longer Can We Have That Paltry 'objective' Knowledge So Prized By The Academic Specialists. To Know Anything At All Becomes A Moral Predicament. Aware That There Is No Such Thing As A Specialized Effect, One Becomes Responsible For Judgments As Well As Facts. Aware That As An Agricultural Scientist He Had 'one Great Subject,' Sir Albert Howard Could No Longer Ask, What Can I Do With What I Know? Without At The Same Time Asking, How Can I Be Responsible For What I Know?
Discipline
Unity
Together
You Have Been Given Questions To Which You Cannot Be Given Answers. You Will Have To Live Them Out - Perhaps A Little At A Time.' And How Long Is That Going To Take?' I Don't Know. As Long As You Live, Perhaps.' That Could Be A Long Time.' I Will Tell You A Further Mystery,' He Said. 'it May Take Longer.
Long
Answers
May
So, Friends, Every Day Do Something That Won't Compute...give Your Approval To All You Cannot Understand...ask The Questions That Have No Answers. Put Your Faith In Two Inches Of Humus That Will Build Under The Trees Every Thousand Years...laugh. Be Joyful Though You Have Considered All The Facts....practice Resurrection.
Years
Practice
Two
For A Time I Rest In The Grace Of The World, And Am Free.
Grace
World
Still Waters
Can We Actually Suppose That We Are Wasting, Polluting, And Making Ugly This Beautiful Land For The Sake Of Patriotism And The Love Of God? Perhaps Some Of Us Would Like To Think So, But In Fact This Destruction Is Taking Place Because We Have Allowed Ourselves To Believe, And To Live, A Mated Pair Of Economic Lies: That Nothing Has A Value That Is Not Assigned To It By The Market; And That The Economic Life Of Our Communities Can Safely Be Handed Over To The Great Corporations.
Beautiful
Lying
Believe
In Losing Stewardship We Lose Fellowship; We Become Outcasts From The Great Neighborhood Of Creation.
Environmental
Fellowship
Losing
It Is Only By Understanding The Cultural Complexity And Largeness Of The Concept Of Agriculture That We Can See The Threatening Diminishments Implied By The Term 'agribusiness.'
Agriculture
Understanding
Agribusiness
Whether We And Our Politicians Know It Or Not, Nature Is Party To All Our Deals And Decisions, And She Has More Votes, A Longer Memory, And A Sterner Sense Of Justice Than We Do.
Nature
Memories
Party
This Curious Faith Is Predicated On The Notion That We Will Soon Develop Unlimited New Sources Of Energy: Domestic Oil Fields, Shale Oil, Gasified Coal, Nuclear Power, Solar Energy, And So On. This Is Fantastical Because The Basic Cause Of The Energy Crisis Is Not Scarcity: It Is Moral Ignorance And Weakness Of Character. We Don't Know How To Use Energy Or What To Use It For. And We Cannot Restrain Ourselves. Our Time Is Characterized As Much By The Abuse And Waste Of Human Energy As It Is By The Abuse And Waste Of Fossil Fuel Energy.
Ignorance
Character
Oil
We Don't Have A Right To Ask Whether We're Going To Succeed Or Not. The Only Question We Have A Right To Ask Is What's The Right Thing To Do? What Does This Earth Require Of Us If We Want To Continue To Live On It?
Want
Succeed
Doe
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. We Must Suspect That Any Statistical Justification Of Ugliness And Violence Is A Revelation Of Stupidity. (pg.192-193, People, Land, And Community)
Thinking
Order
Land
In The Dark Of The Moon, In Flying Snow, In The Dead Of Winter, War Spreading, Families Dying, The World In Danger, I Walk The Rocky Hillside, Sowing Clover.
War
Dark
Winter
A Man's Life Is Always Dealing With Permanence, That Is The Most Dangerous Kind Of Irresponsibility Is To Think Of Your Doings As Temporary.
Men
Thinking
Kind
It Is Impossible To Prefigure The Salvation Of The World In The Same Language By Which The World Has Been Dismembered And Defaced.
World
Impossible
Language
Healing Is Impossible In Loneliness; It Is The Opposite Of Loneliness. Conviviality Is Healing. To Be Healed We Must Come With All The Other Creatures To The Feast Of Creation. (pg.99, "the Body And The Earth")
Loneliness
Healing
Opposites
Nature Is Always Trying To Tell Us That We Are Not So Superior Or Independent Or Alone Or Autonomous As We May Think.
Independent
Thinking
Always Trying
Beauty . . . Cannot Be Interpreted. It Is Not An Empirically Verifiable Fact; It Is Not A Quantity.
Facts
Quantity
You Can't Know Where Life Will Take You, But You Can Commit To A Direction
Commit
Knows
We Have The World To Live In On The Condition That We Will Take Good Care Of It. And To Take Good Care Of It We Have To Know It. And To Know It And To Be Willing To Take Care Of It, We Have To Love It.
World
Care
Willing
It Is The Man Who Can Think Of No Alternative To His Enslavement Who Is Truly A Slave.
Men
Thinking
Alternatives
Not Just Self-restraint, That Old Killjoy, But Communal Restraint.
Self
Restraint
Killjoy
We Do Not Need To Plan Or Devise A "world Of The Future"; If We Take Care Of The World Of The Present, The Future Will Have Received Full Justice From Us. A Good Future Is Implicit In The Soils, Forests, Grasslands, Marshes, Deserts, Mountains, Rivers, Lakes, And Oceans That We Have Now, And In The Good Things Of Human Culture That We Have Now; The Only Valid "futurology" Available To Us Is To Take Care Of Those Things. We Have No Need To Contrive And Dabble At "the Future Of The Human Race"; We Have The Same Pressing Need That We Have Always Had - To Love, Care For, And Teach Our Children.
Children
Ocean
Lakes
Our Most Serious Problem, Perhaps, Is That We Have Become A Nation Of Fantasists. We Believe, Apparently, In The Infinite Availability Of Finite Resources.
Nature
Believe
Animal
There Are Lots Of Bad Things That Can Happen To A Food Economy That's Both Extensive And Centralized. There's No Substitute For Petroleum. To Have A Growth Economy Based On A Declining Fuel Supply Is Bound To Be Stressful.
Growth
Fuel
Economy
Akin To The Idea That Time Is Money Is The Concept, Less Spoken But As Commonly Assumed, That We May Be Adequately Represented By Money. The Giving Of Money Has Thus Become Our Characteristic Virtue. But To Give Is Not To Do. The Money Is Given In Lieu Of Action, Thought, Care, Time.
Ideas
Giving
Care
The Form Of A Poem Is Invisible. A Poem Is Not An "object." This Is Hard To Accept In A Mechanical Age.
Age
Invisible
Accepting
The Primary Motive For Good Care And Good Use Of The Land-community Is Always Going To Be Affection, Which Is Too Often Lacking.
Land
Community
Use
What Would Be The Point Of Being Personally Whole In A Dismembered Society, Or Personally Healthy In A Land Scalped, Eroded And Poisoned, Or Personally Free In A World Entirely Controlled By The Government Or Enlightened By Television?
Government
Land
Healthy
The Life We Want Is Not Merely The One We Have Chosen And Made. It Is The One We Must Be Choosing And Making
Want
Made
Chosen
The Economy Is Still Substantially That Of The Fur Trade, Still Based On The Same General Kinds Of Commercial Items: Technology, Weapons, Ornaments, Novelties, And Drugs. The One Great Difference Is That By Now The Revolution Has Deprived The Mass Of Consumers Of Any Independent Access To The Staples Of Life: Clothing, Shelter, Food, Even Water. Air Access Remains The Only Necessity That The Average User Can Still Get For Himself, And The Revolution Has Imposed A Heavy Tax On That By Way Of Pollution. Commercial Conquest Is Far More Thorough And Final Than Military Defeat.
Military
Independent
Technology
To Define Knowledge As Merely Empirical Is To Limit One's Ability To Know; It Enfeebles One's Ability To Feel And Think.
Thinking
Limits
Ability
Want Of Imagination Makes Things Unreal Enough To Be Destroyed. By Imagination I Mean Knowledge And Love. I Mean Compassion. People Of Power Kill Children, The Old Send The Young To Die, Because They Have No Imagination. They Have Power. Can You Have Power And Imagination At The Same Time? Can You Kill People You Don’t Know And Have Compassion For Them At The Same Time?
Children
Mean
Compassion
The Passive American Consumer, Sitting Down To A Meal Of Pre-prepared Food, Confronts Inert, Anonymous Substances That Have Been Processed, Dyed, Breaded, Sauced, Gravied, Ground, Pulped, Strained, Blended, Prettified, And Sanitized Beyond Resemblance To Any Part Of Any Creature That Ever Lived. The Products Of Nature And Agriculture Have Been Made, To All Appearances, The Products Of Industry. Both Eater And Eaten Are Thus In Exile From Biological Reality.
Inspiring
Reality
Agriculture
In Living In The World By His Own Will And Skill, The Stupidest Peasant Or Tribesman Is More Competent Than The Most Intelligent Worker Or Technician Or Intellectual In A Society Of Specialists.
Work
Intelligent
Skills
We Live The Given Life, And Not The Planned.
Given
Given Life
If, On The Other Hand, Conservationists Are Willing To Insist On Having The Best Food, Produced In The Best Way, As Close To Their Homes As Possible, And If They Are Willing To Learn To Judge The Quality Of Food And Food Production, Then They Are Going To Give Economic Support To An Entirely Different Kind Of Land Use In An Entirely Different Landscape. This Landscape Will Have A Higher Ratio Of Caretakers To Acres, Of Care To Use. It Will Be At Once More Domestic And More Wild Than The Industrial Landscape.
Home
Land Use
Hands
For The True Measure Of Agriculture Is Not The Sophistication Of Its Equipment The Size Of Its Income Or Even The Statistics Of Its Productivity But The Good Health Of The Land.
Land
Agriculture
Income
The Reason To Preserve Wilderness Is That We Need It. We Need Wilderness Of All Kinds, Large And Small, Public And Private. Wee Need To Go Now And Again Into Places Where Our Work Is Disallowed, Where Our Hopes And Plans Have No Standing. We Need To Come Into The Presence Of The Unqualified And Mysterious Formality Of Creation.
Needs
Unqualified
Mysterious
I Believe Until Fairly Recently Our Destructions Of Nature Were More Or Less Unwitting -- The By-products, So To Speak, Of Our Ignorance Or Weakness Or Depravity. It Is Our Present Principled And Elaborately Rationalized Rape And Plunder Of The Natural World That Is A New Thing Under The Sun.
Believe
Ignorance
Weakness
Men May Dam It And Say That They Have Made A Lake, But It Will Still Be A River. It Will Keep Its Nature And Bide Its Time, Like A Caged Animal Alert For The Slightest Opening. In Time, It Will Have Its Way; The Dam, Like The Ancient Cliffs, Will Be Carried Away Piecemeal In The Currents.
Animal
Men
Lakes
Be Like The Fox Who Makes More Tracks Than Necessary, Some In The Wrong Direction. Practice Resurrection.
Practice
Track
Foxes
When Going Back Makes Sense, You Are Going Ahead.
Make Sense
If You're A Writer And You Are At All Inclined To Speak As A Christian In Some Way, You Realize Very Quickly That The Conventional Language Is Pretty Much Useless. It Takes A Long Time To Get Past That, Or It Has Taken Me A Long Time. People In Conventional Christianity Have Spoken Lightly And Sometimes Frivolously Of God For A Long Time. It's A Word That Needs To Be Used Sparingly, In My Opinion.
Christian
Taken
Past
An Agrarian Mind Begins With The Love Of Fields And Ramifies In Good Farming, Good Cooking & Good Eating
Cooking
Mind
Fields
But The Only Possible Guarantee Of The Future Is Responsible Behavior In The Present.
Future
Environmental
Guarantees
For Want Of A Pilate Of Their Own, Some Christians Would Accept A Constantine Or Whomever Might Be The Current Incarnation Of Caesar.
Christian
Want
Might
If You Eat, You Are Involved In Agriculture.
Agriculture
Involved
Ifs
Praise Ignorance, For What Man Has Not Encountered He Has Not Destroyed.
Ignorance
Men
Praise
If We Do Not Serve What Coheres And Endures, We Serve What Disintegrates And Destroys.
Environmental
Sustainability
Endure
A Significant Part Of The Pleasure Of Eating Is In One’s Accurate Consciousness Of The Lives And The World From Which Food Comes.
Food
World
Consciousness
Despite Its Protests To The Contrary, Modern Christianity Has Become Willy-nilly The Religion Of The State And The Economic Status Quo. Because It Has Been So Exclusively Dedicated To Incanting Anemic Souls Into Heaven, It Has Been Made The Tool Of Much Earthly Villainy. It Has, For The Most Part, Stood Silently By While A Predatory Economy Has Ravaged The World, Destroyed Its Natural Beauty And Health, Divided And Plundered Its Human Communities And Households.
Community
Heaven
Soul
The More Local And Settled A Culture, The Better It Stays Put, The Less The Damage. It Is The Foreigner Whose Road Of Excess Leads To A Desert... A Man With A Machine And Inadequate Culture... Is A Pestilence. He Shakes More Than He Can Hold.
Men
Pestilence
Damage
The Assumption Is That People So Ignorant And Thoughtless And Silly And Greedy May Simply Call Upon The Army Corps Of Engineers In Order To Receive A Clean And Abundant Supply Of Water From Reservoirs In The Mountains. A Much Likelier Outcome Is That They Will Be Drinking An Ever Stronger Mixture Of Sewage And Mine Acid And Mud And Cropspray And Various Other Defecations Of The Industrial Paradise.
Drinking
Silly
Army
From A Human Point Of View, The Difference Between The Mind Of A Human And That Of A Mountain Goat Is Wonderful; From The Point Of View Of The Infinite Ignorance That Surrounds Us, The Difference Is Not Impressive. Indeed, From That Point Of View, The Goat May Have The Better Mind, For He Is More Congenially Adapted To His Place, And He Would Not Endanger His Species Or His Planet For The Sake Of An Idea.
Nature
Ignorance
Animal
To Love Anything Good, At Any Cost, Is A Bargain.
Cost
Bargains
A Farmer's Market Is Worth More Than Everything I've Written.
Family
Farmers
Written
So, Friends, Every Day Do Something That Won't Compute. Love The Lord. Love The World. Work For Nothing. Take All That You Have And Be Poor. Love Someone Who Does Not Deserve It. Denounce The Government And Embrace The Flag. Hope To Live In That Free Republic For Which It Stands.
Government
Simplicity
Doe
A Corporation, Essentially, Is A Pile Of Money To Which A Number Of Persons Have Sold Their Moral Allegiance.
Numbers
Corporations
Moral
We Are Alive Within Mystery, By Miracle... We Have More Than We Can Know. We Know More Than We Can Say.
Miracle
Alive
Mystery
Charity Even For One Person Does Not Make Sense Except In Terms Of An Effort To Love All Creation In Response To The Creator's Love For It.
Effort
Doe
Charity
The Most Alarming Sign Of The State Of Our Society Now Is That Our Leaders Have The Courage To Sacrifice The Lives Of Young People In War But Have Not The Courage To Tell Us That We Must Be Less Greedy And Wasteful.
War
Sacrifice
People
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.
Land
Disease
Poverty
Only The Action That Is Moved By Love For The Good At Hand Has The Hope Of Being Responsible And Generous.
Hands
Action
Responsible
Eating Is An Agricultural Act.
Agriculture
Environment
Eating
It's Mighty Hard Right Now To Think Of Anything That's Precious That Isn't Endangered. There Are No Sacred And Unsacred Places; There Are Only Sacred And Desecrated Places. My Belief Is That The World And Our Life In It Are Conditional Gifts.
Thinking
Sacred
World
If We Do Not Live Where We Work And When We Work We Are Wasting Our Lives And Our Work Too.
Our Lives
Ifs
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.
Vacation
Mind
Cards
The Living Can't Quit Living Because The World Has Turned Terrible And People They Love And Need Are Killed. They Can't Because They Don't. The Light That Shines Into Darkness And Never Goes Out Calls Them On Into Life. It Calls Them Back Again Into The Great Room. It Calls Them Into Their Bodies And Into The World, Into Whatever The World Will Require. It Calls Them Into Work And Pleasure, Goodness And Beauty, And The Company Of Other Loved Ones.
Light
People
Shining
To Be Well Used, Creatures And Places Must Be Used Sympathetically, Just As They Must Be Known Sympathetically To Be Well Known...the "animal Scientist" To Whom It Is Of No Concern Whether Or Not Animals Suffer Will Almost Inevitably Aid And Abet The Destruction Of The Decent Old Ideal Of Animal Husbandry And, As A Consequence, Increase The Suffering Of Animals. I Hope That My Country May Be Delivered From The Remote, Cold Abstractions Of University Science.
Country
Animal
Pet
The World Is Whole Beyond Human Knowing.
Life
Knowing
World
There Are Not Enough Rich And Powerful People To Consume The Whole World; For That, The Rich And Powerful Need The Help Of Countless Ordinary People.
Powerful
People
Ordinary
Go With Your Love To The Fields. Lie Down In The Shade. Rest Your Head In Her Lap. Swear Allegiance To What Is Nighest Your Thoughts. As Soon As The Generals And The Politicos Can Predict The Motions Of Your Mind, Lose It. Leave It As A Sign To Mark The False Trail, The Way You Didn't Go. Be Like The Fox Who Makes More Tracks Than Necessary, Some In The Wrong Direction. Practice Resurrection.
Lying
Practice
Track
It Is Easy For Me To Imagine That The Next Great Division Of The World Will Be Between People Who Wish To Live As Creatures And People Who Wish To Live As Machines.
People
Wish
Division
It Is No More Possible To Live In The Future Than It Is To Live In The Past. If Life Is Not Now, It Is Never.
Past
Life Is
Ifs
How Do We Submit? By Not Being Radical Enough. Or By Not Being Thorough Enough, Which Is The Same Thing.
Enough
Thorough
Radical
The Aim Of Industrialization Has Always Been To Replace People With Machines Or Other Technology, To Make The Cost Of Production As Low As Possible, To Sell The Product As High As Possible, And To Move The Wealth Into Fewer And Fewer Hands.
Moving
Technology
Hands
As Industrial Technology Advances And Enlarges, And In The Process Assumes Greater Social, Economic, And Political Force, It Carries People Away From Where They Belong By History, Culture, Deeds, Association, And Affection.
Technology
People
Political
Eating Is An Agricultural Act. Eating Ends The Annual Drama Of The Food Economy That Begins With Planting And Birth. Most Eaters, However, Are No Longer Aware That This Is True. They Think Of Food As An Agricultural Product, Perhaps, But They Do Not Think Of Themselves As Participants In Agriculture. They Think Of Themselves As 'consumers.'
Drama
Thinking
Agriculture
It Was A Country . . . That He And His People Had Known How To Use And Abuse, But Not How To Preserve.
Country
People
Abuse
The People Who Benefit From This State Of Affairs Have Been At Pains To Convince Us That The Agricultural Practices And Policies That Have Almost Annihilated The Farming Population Have Greatly Benefited The Population Of Food Consumers. But More And More Consumers Are Now Becoming Aware That Our Supposed Abundance Of Cheap And Healthful Food Is To A Considerable Extent Illusory.
Pain
Practice
Convince Us
A Viable Neighborhood Is A Community: And A Viable Community Is Made Up Of Neighbors Who Cherish And Protect What They Have In Common.
Community
Environmental
Common
The Great Enemy Of Freedom Is The Alignment Of Political Power With Wealth. This Alignment Destroys The Commonwealth - That Is, The Natural Wealth Of Localities And The Local Economies Of Household, Neighborhood, And Community - And So Destroys Democracy, Of Which The Commonwealth Is The Foundation And Practical Means.
Mean
Community
Political
Our Land Passes In And Out Of Our Bodies Just As Our Bodies Pass In And Out Of Our Land
Land
Body
When You Are New At Sheep-raising And Your Ewe Has A Lamb, Your Impulse Is To Stay There And Help It Nurse And See To It And All. After A While You Know That The Best Thing You Can Do Is Walk Out Of The Barn.
Sheep
Nurse
Barns
The Connections Between People And Land Are Dangerously Oversimplified And Mainly Technological.
Land
People
Connections
It Gets Darker And Darker And Darker, And Then Jesus Is Born.
Jesus
Born
The Rule, Acknowledged Or Not, Seems To Be That If We Have Great Power We Must Use It. We Would Use A Steam Shovel To Pick Up A Dime. We Have Experts Who Can Prove There Is No Other Way To Do It.
Experts
Dimes
Use
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


Trending Author
Teresa Of Avila
Lauren Potter
Brent Scowcroft
James Bovard
Tim Pawlenty
Richard Armitage
Category
Information