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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.
-Wendell Berry
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We Do Not Need

Wendell Berry
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.
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More From Wendell Berry
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
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
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
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
Our Destruction Of Nature Is Not Just Bad Stewardship, Or Stupid Economics, Or A Betrayal Of Family Responsibility; It Is The Most Horrid Blasphemy. It Is Flinging God's Gifts Into His Face, As If They Were Of No Worth Beyond That Assigned To Them By Our Destruction Of Them.
Betrayal
Stupid
Responsibility
We Can Fight The Global Economy With A Strong Local Economy.
Strong
Fighting
Economy
Give Your Approval To All You Cannot Understand.
Giving
Approval
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
Nobody Can Discover The World For Somebody Else. Only When We Discover It For Ourselves Does It Become Common Ground And A Common Bond And We Cease To Be Alone.
Inspirational
Courage
Travel
In Health The Flesh Is Graced, The Holy Enters The World.
World
Flesh
Healthcare
Analogies Have Tied Things Together For Me, Personally. The Fundamental One For Me Is The Analogy Between Your Relationship To Your Spouse And Your Relationship To Your Place. Both Need To Be A Settled Commitment And Both Involve Continuous Learning And Adjusting.
Commitment
Together
Needs
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
No Wonder So Many Sermons Are Devoted Exclusively To "spiritual" Subjects. If One Is Living By The Tithes Of History's Most Destructive Economy, Then The Disembodiment Of The Soul Becomes The Chief Of Worldly Conveniences.
Spiritual
Soul
Wonder
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
The Wrecking Ball Is Characteristic Of Our Way With Materials. We 'cannot Afford' To Log A Forest Selectively, To Mine Without Destroying Topography, Or To Farm Without Catastrophic Soil Erosion. A Production-oriented Economy Can Indeed Live In This Way, But Only So Long As Production Lasts.
Erosion
Long
Environmental
One Of The Strongest Of Contemporary Conventions Is That Of Comparing To Thoreau Every Writer Who Has Been As Far Out Of The House As The Mailbox.
House
Conventions
Mailboxes
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
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
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
To Work Without Pleasure Or Affection, To Make A Product That Is Not Both Useful And Beautiful, Is To Dishonor God, Nature, The Thing That Is Made, And Whomever It Is Made For.
Beautiful
Affection
Pleasure
I'd Rather Rely On Mother Nature's Wisdom Than Man's Cleverness
Mother
Men
Cleverness
I Believe In Thrift As I Believe In Freedom, But I Don't Support The Plutocratic Hostility To Taxation, Regulation, And Protections Of Land, Water, And Air.
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Land
Air
The Answers To The Human Problems Of Ecology Are To Be Found In Economy. And The Answers To The Problems Of Economy Are To Be Found In Culture And Character. To Fail To See This Is To Go On Dividing The World Falsely Between Guilty Producers And Innocent Consumers.
Character
Culture
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We Conservatives Bemoan The Decline In Values That Has Besieged Our Society. Why Then Should We Not Abhor The Lack Of Morality Involved In Discharging Untested Chemicals Into The Air, Ground, And Water To Alter And Harm, To Whatever Degree, Human Life And Wildlife? As A Conservative, I Do Abhor It.
Air
Water
Degrees
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
Beauty . . . Cannot Be Interpreted. It Is Not An Empirically Verifiable Fact; It Is Not A Quantity.
Facts
Quantity
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
To Treat Life As Less Than A Miracle Is To Give Up On It.
Life
Giving Up
Miracle
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
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
The Name Of Our Proper Connection To The Earth Is 'good Work,' For Good Work Involves Much Giving Of Honor. It Honors The Source Of Its Materials; It Honors The Place Where It Is Done; It Honors The Art By Which It Is Done; It Honors The Thing That It Makes And The User Of The Made Thing.
Art
Work
Names
It Gets Darker And Darker And Darker, And Then Jesus Is Born.
Jesus
Born
The Two Great Aims Of Industrialism — Replacement Of People By Technology And Concentration Of Wealth Into The Hands Of A Small Plutocracy — Seem Close To Fulfillment.
Technology
Hands
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The Mind That Is Not Baffled, Is Unemployed
Mind
Baffled
Unemployed
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
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
If You Start A Conversation With The Assumption That You Are Right Or That You Must Win, Obviously It Is Difficult To Talk.
Winning
Assumption
Resolution
Only The Action That Is Moved By Love For The Good At Hand Has The Hope Of Being Responsible And Generous.
Hands
Action
Responsible
If We Represent Knowledge As A Tree, We Know That Things That Are Divided Are Yet Connected. We Know That To Observe The Divisions And Ignore The Connections Is To Destroy The Tree.
Educational
Tree
Connections
Without Animals, Something Essential Is Removed From The Minds Of The Farmers.
Animal
Mind
Essentials
And In Some Of The People Of The Town And Community Surrounding It, One Of The Characteristic Diseases Of The Twentieth Century Was Making Its Way: The Suspicion That They Would Be Greatly Improved If They Were Somewhere Else.
Somewhere Else
People
Community
But In Fact As Knowledge Expands Globally It Is Being Lost Locally. This Is The Paramount Truth Of The Modern History Of Rural Places Everywhere In The World. And It Is The Gravest Problem Of Land Use: Modern Humans Typically Are Using Places Whose Nature They Have Never Known And Whose History They Have Forgotten; Thus Ignorant, They Almost Necessarily Abuse What They Use.
Land
Abuse
Ignorant
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
To Mind Being Disliked By A Woman You Don’t Desire And Are Not Married To Is Yet Another Serious Failure Of Common Sense.
Common Sense
Mind
Desire
The Old And Honorable Idea Of 'vocation' Is Simply That We Each Are Called, By God, Or By Our Gifts, Or By Our Preference, To A Kind Of Good Work For Which We Are Particularly Fitted.
Ideas
Kind
Good Work
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
Much Of Our Waste Problem Is To Be Accounted For By The Intentional Flimsiness And Unrepairability Of The Labor-savers And Gadgets That We Have Become Addicted To.
Addiction
Gadgets
Waste
A Teacher's Major Contribution May Pop Out Anonymously In The Life Of Some Ex-student's Grandchild. A Teacher, Finally, Has Nothing To Go On But Faith, A Student Nothing To Offer In Return But Testimony.
Faith
Teacher
Grandchildren
It Is Therefore Absurd To Approach The Subject Of Health Piecemeal With A Departmentalized Band Of Specialists. A Medical Doctor Uninterested In Nutrition, In Agriculture, In The Wholesomeness Of Mind And Spirit Is As Absurd As A Farmer Who Is Uninterested In Health. Our Fragmentation Of This Subject Cannot Be Our Cure, Because It Is Our Disease. The Body Cannot Be Whole Alone. Persons Cannot Be Whole Alone. It Is Wrong To Think That Bodily Health Is Compatible With Spiritual Confusion Or Cultural Disorder, Or With Polluted Air And Water Or Impoverished Soil.
Spiritual
Thinking
Air
Where Is Our Comfort But In The Free, Uninvolved, Finally Mysterious Beauty And Grace Of This World That We Did Not Make, That Has No Price? Where Is Our Sanity But There? Where Is Our Pleasure But In Working And Resting Kindly In The Presence Of This World? (pg. 215, Economy And Pleasure)
Grace
Comfort
World
In This State Of Total Consumerism-which Is To Say A State Of Helpless Dependence On Things And Services And Ideas And Motives That We Have Forgotten How To Provide Ourselves-all Meaningful Contact Between Ourselves And The Earth Is Broken. We Do Not Understand The Earth In Terms Either Of What It Offers Us Or Of What It Requires Of Us, And I Think It Is The Rule That People Inevitably Destroy What They Do Not Understand.
Meaningful
Thinking
Ideas
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")
Real
Animal
Air
I Thought, He Must Forebear To Reveal His Power And Glory By Presenting Himself As Himself, And Must Be Present Only In The Ordinary Miracle Of The Existence Of His Creatures. Those Who Wish To See Him Must See Him In The Poor, The Hungry, The Hurt, The Wordless Creatures, The Groaning And Travailing Beautiful World.
Beautiful
Hurt
Miracle
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
A Person Who Undertakes To Grow A Garden At Home, By Practices That Will Preserve Rather Than Exploit The Economy Of The Soil, Has His Mind Precisely Against What Is Wrong With Us.
Home
Garden
Practice
Annual Plants Are Nature's Emergency Medical Service, Seeded In Sounds And Scars To Hold The Land Until The Perennial Cover Is Re-established.
Land
Emergencies
Sound
Good Farmers, Who Take Seriously Their Duties As Stewards Of Creation And Of Their Land's Inheritors, Contribute To The Welfare Of Society In More Ways Than Society Usually Acknowledges, Or Even Knows. These Farmers Produce Valuable Goods, Of Course; But They Also Conserve Soil, They Conserve Water, They Conserve Wildlife, They Conserve Open Space, They Conserve Scenery.
Land
Space
Water
Be Like The Fox Who Makes More Tracks Than Necessary, Some In The Wrong Direction. Practice Resurrection.
Practice
Track
Foxes
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
We Enter Solitude, In Which Also We Lose Loneliness. True Solitude Is Found In The Wild Places, Where One Is Without Human Obligation. One’s Inner Voices Become Audible. One Feels The Attraction Of One’s Most Intimate Sources. In Consequence, One Responds More Clearly To Other Lives. The More Coherent One Becomes Within Oneself As A Creature, The More Fully One Enters Into The Communion Of All Creatures.
Loneliness
Wild Places
Voice
To Be Patient In An Emergency Is A Terrible Trial.
Trials
Emergencies
Patient
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
Eating With The Fullest Pleasure - Pleasure, That Is, That Does Not Depend On Ignorance - Is Perhaps The Profoundest Enactment Of Our Connection With The World. In This Pleasure We Experience Our Dependence And Our Gratitude, For We Are Living In A Mystery, From Creatures We Did Not Make And Powers We Cannot Comprehend.
Gratitude
Food
Ignorance
The Soil Is The Great Connector Of Lives, The Source And Destination Of All. It Is The Healer And Restorer And Resurrector, By Which Disease Passes Into Health, Age Into Youth, Death Into Life. Without Proper Care For It We Can Have No Community, Because Without Proper Care For It We Can Have No Life.
Community
Age
Care
He Never Complained. He Seemed To Have No Instinct For The Making Much Of Oneself That Complaining Requires.
Complaining
Instinct
Oneself
I Could Die In Peace, I Think, If The World Was Beautiful. To Know It's Being Ruined Is Hard.
Beautiful
Thinking
World
Don't Pray For The Rain To Stop; Pray For Good Luck Fishing When The River Floods.
Rain
Good Luck
Fishing
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
People Are Always Talking About The First Church. The Real First Church Was That Gaggle Of People Who Followed Jesus Around. We Don't Know Anything About Them. But He Apparently Didn't Ask Them What Creed They Subscribed To, Or What Their Sexual Preference Was, Or Any Of That. He Fed Them. He Healed Them. He Forgave Them. He Is Clear About Sin, But He Was Also For Forgiveness.
Jesus
Real
Talking
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
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
If In The Human Economy, A Squash In The Field Is Worth More Than A Bushel Of Soil, That Does Not Mean That Food Is More Valuable Than Soil; It Means Simply That We Do Not Know How To Value The Soil. In Its Complexity And Its Potential Longevity, The Soil Exceeds Our Comprehension; We Do Not Know How To Place A Just Market Value On It, And We Will Never Learn How. Its Value Is Inestimable; We Must Value It, Beyond Whatever Price We Put On It, By Respecting It.
Mean
Land
Squash
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
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
The Mercy Of The World Is You Don't Know What's Going To Happen.
Rap
Tomorrow May Never Come
World
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
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
We Are Now, Measurably, Reducing The Availability Of These Life-supporting Goods Which We Can Think Of (though Only On The Conditions Of Good Health And Good Care) As Self-renewing Or "sustainable." We Are Also Destroying Rapidly The Supplies Of The Fossil Fuels, Which Are Limited And Not Renewable, And On Which We Have Become Totally Dependent.
Thinking
Self
Availability
Better Than Any Argument Is To Rise At Dawn And Pick Dew-wet Red Berries In A Cup.
Food
Cooking
Red Lipstick
It Is Possible, I Think, To Say That... A Christian Agriculture [is] Formed Upon The Understanding That It Is Sinful For People To Misuse Or Destroy What They Did Not Make. The Creation Is A Unique, Irreplaceable Gift, Therefore To Be Used With Humility, Respect, And Skill.
Christian
Humility
Unique
Let Us Have The Candor To Acknowledge That What We Call "the Economy" Or "the Free Market" Is Less And Less Distinguishable From Warfare.
Warfare
Economy
Candor
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
Soil Is Not Usually Lost In Slabs Or Heaps Of Magnificent Tonnage. It Is Lost A Little At A Time Over Millions Of Acres By The Careless Acts Of Millions Of People. It Cannot Be Saved By Heroic Feats Of Gigantic Technology, But Only By Millions Of Small Acts And Restraints, Conditioned By Small Fidelities, Skills, And Desires. Soil Loss Is Ultimately A Cultural Problem; It Will Be Corrected Only By Cultural Solutions.
Loss
Technology
Small Acts
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.
Long
Community
Environmental
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
The Surface Of The Quieted River, As I Think Now, Is Like A Window Looking Into Another World That Is Like This One Except That It Is Quiet. Its Quietness Makes It Seem Perfect. The Ripples Are Like The Slates Of A Blind Of A Shutter Through Which We See Imperfectly What Is Perfect. Though That Other World Can Be Seen Only Momentarily, It Looks Everlasting. As The Ripples Become More Agitated, The Window Darkens And The Other World Is Hidden.the Surface Of The River Is Like A Living Soul, Which Is Easy To Disturb, Is Often Disturbed, But, Growing Calm, Shows What It Was, Is, And Will Be.
Thinking
Other Worlds
Rivers
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
Commercial Conquest Is Far More Thorough And Final Than Military Defeat.
Military
Finals
Defeat
What I Stand For Is What I Stand On.
If You Don't Know Where You Are, You Don't Know Who You Are.
Journey
Hiking
Where We Come
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
I Lack The Peace Of Simple Things. I Am Never Wholly In Place. I Find No Peace Or Grace. We Sell The World To Buy Fire, Our Way Lighted By Burning Men.
Simple
Men
Fire
The Two Ideas, Justice And Vocation, Are Inseparable.... It Is By Way Of The Principle And Practice Of Vocation That Sanctity And Reverence Enter Into The Human Economy. It Was Thus Possible For Traditional Cultures To Conceive That "to Work Is To Pray." (pg. 258, The Idea Of A Local Economy)
Practice
Ideas
Two
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
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
And So There Would Always Be More To Remember That Could No Longer Be Seen...our History Is Always Returning To A Little Patch Of Weeds And Saplings With An Old Chimney Sticking Up By Itself...and Here I Look Ahead To The Resting Of My Case: I Love The House That Belonged To The Chimney, Holding It Bright In Memory, And Love The Saplings And The Weeds.
Weed
Memories
House
People Who Want To See The Beauty Of Nature From Motorboats And Automobiles Would Obviously Be Just As Pleased, And As Fully Recreated, At A Drive-in Movie.
Nature
People
Want
Hunger Is A Powerful Persuader If It Happens, And It's Conceivable That It Could Happen. Country People Have Always Known This.
Country
Powerful
People
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
We Have Become Blind To The Alternatives To Violence.
Alternatives
Violence
Blind
The Earth Is What We All Have In Common.
Nature
Earth Day
Environmental
It Was A Country . . . That He And His People Had Known How To Use And Abuse, But Not How To Preserve.
Country
People
Abuse
When There Are Enough People On The Land To Use It But Not Enough To Husband It, Then The Wildness Of The Soil That We Call Fertility Begins To Diminish, And The Soil Itself Begins To Flee From Us In Water And Wind.
Husband
Wind
Land
The Poem Is Important, But Not More Than The People Whose Survival It Serves.
People
Survival
Important
If We Are Serious About Peace, Then We Must Work For It As Ardently, Seriously, Continuously, Carefully, And Bravely As We Have Ever Prepared For War.
War
Serious
Prepared
The Real Work Of Planet-saving Will Be Small, Humble, And Humbling, And (insofar As It Involves Love) Pleasing And Rewarding. Its Jobs Will Be Too Many To Count, Too Many To Report, Too Many To Be Publicly Noticed Or Rewarded, Too Small To Make Anyone Rich Or Famous.
Jobs
Real
Humble
Some Nights In The Midst Of This Loneliness I Swung Among The Scattered Stars At The End Of The Thin Thread Of Faith Alone.
Stars
Loneliness
Night
I Began To Know My Story Then. Like Everybody's, It Was Going To Be The Story Of Living In The Absence Of The Dead. What Is The Thread That Holds It All Together? Grief, I Thought For A While. And Grief Is There Sure Enough, Just About All The Way Through. From The Time I Was A Girl I Have Never Been Far From It. But Grief Is Not A Force And Has No Power To Hold. You Only Bear It. 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.
Girl
Grief
Dark
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
In The Loss Of Skill, We Lose Stewardship; In Losing Stewardship We Lose Fellowship; We Become Outcasts From The Great Neighborhood Of Creation. It Is Possible - As Our Experience In This Good Land Shows - To Exile Ourselves From Creation, And To Ally Ourselves With The Principle Of Destruction - Which Is, Ultimately, The Principle Of Nonentity. It Is To Be Willing In General For Being To Not-be. And Once We Have Allied Ourselves With That Principle, We Are Foolish To Think That We Can Control The Results. (pg. 303, The Gift Of Good Land)
Loss
Thinking
Land
We Cannot Hope To Be Secure When Our Government Has Declared, By Its Readiness To Act Alone, Its Willingness To Be Everybody's Enemy.
Government
Enemy
Readiness
New Grief, When It Came, You Could Feel Filling The Air. It Took Up All The Room There Was. The Place Itself, The Whole Place, Became A Reminder Of The Absence Of The Hurt Or The Dead Or The Missing One. I Don't Believe That Grief Passes Away. It Has Its Time And Place Forever. More Time Is Added To It; It Becomes A Story Within A Story. But Grief And Griever Alike Endure.
Hurt
Grief
Believe
Waking Up From A Dream Of Violence Is Much The Same As Waking Up From A Dream Of Love. You Must Go On Living Your Life.
Dream
Love You
Live Your Life
The Only Sustainable City - And This, To Me, Is The Indispensable Ideal And Goal - Is A City In Balance With Its Countryside.
Cities
Goal
Balance
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
My Label Is Just "good Farming", Which Isn't Something You Can Put On A T-shirt.
Labels
T Shirt
Farming
Geese Appear High Over Us, / Pass, And The Sky Closes. Abandon, / As In Love Or Sleep, Holds Them To Their Way, Clear / In The Ancient Faith: What We Need / Is Here. And We Pray, Not / For New Earth Or Heaven, But To Be / Quiet In Heart, And In Eye, / Clear. What We Need Is Here.
Sleep
Eye
Heart
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
The World, Which God Looked At And Found Entirely Good, We Find None Too Good To Pollute Entirely And Destroy Piecemeal.
World
Found
I Don't Believe That Grief Passes Away. It Has Its Time And Place Forever. More Time Is Added To It; It Becomes A Story Within A Story. But Grief And Griever Alike Endure.
Grief
Believe
Forever
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
And Having Thoughtlessly Polluted Our Streams And Rivers, We Have Seen In Recent Years A Rapidly Growing Market For Bottled Drinking Water. I Am Sure That Some Will Say That A Rapidly Growing Market For Water Is "good For The Economy," And Most Of Us Are Still Affluent Enough To Pay The Cost. Nevertheless, It Is A Considerable Cost That We Are Now Paying For Drinkable Water, Which We Once Had In Plentiful Supply At Little Cost Or None At All. And The Increasing Of The Cost Suggests That The Time May Come When The Cost Will Be Unaffordable.
Drinking
Years
Rivers
Long Live Gravity! Long Live Stupidity, Error, And Greed In The Palaces Of Fantasy Capitalism!
Errors
Long
Stupidity
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
Anybody Interested In Solving, Rather Than Profiting From, The Problems Of Food Production And Distribution Will See That In The Long Run The Safest Food Supply Is A Local Food Supply, Not A Supply That Is Dependent On A Global Economy. Nations And Regions Within Nations Must Be Left Free And Should Be Encouraged To Develop The Local Food Economies That Best Suit Local Needs And Local Conditions.
Running
Long
Suits
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
If We Are To Have A Culture As Resilient And Competent In The Face Of Necessity As It Needs To Be, Then It Must Somehow Involve Within Itself A Ceremonious Generosity Toward The Wilderness Of Natural Force And Instinct. The Farm Must Yield A Place To The Forest, Not As A Wood Lot, Or Even As A Necessary Agricultural Principle But As A Sacred Grove - A Place Where The Creation Is Let Alone, To Serve As Instruction, Example, Refuge; A Place For People To Go, Free Of Work And Presumption, To Let Themselves Alone. (pg. 125, The Body And The Earth)
Yield
People
Generosity
Reverence Makes It Possible To Be Whole, Though Ignorant. It Is The Wholeness Of Understanding.
Respect
Understanding
Ignorant
That We Should Have An Agriculture Based As Much On Petroleum As The Soil-that We Need Petroleum Exactly As Much As We Need Food And Must Have It Before We Can Eat-may Seem Absurd. It Is Absurd. It Is Nevertheless True.
Should Have
Land
Agriculture
The Latest Technology Is Not Always Good For Anything Except To The Producers Of The Technology.
Technology
Producers
Latest Technology
The River Is Of The Earth And It Is Free. It Is Rigorously Embanked And Bound, And Yet It Is Free. To Hell With Restraint, It Says, I Have Got To Be Going. It Will Grind Out Its Dams. It Will Go Over Or Around Them. They Will Become Pieces.
Lakes
Sea
Fishing
Having Hope Is Hard; Harder When You Get Older.
Having Hope
Harder
Hard
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 Care Of The Earth Is Our Most Ancient And Most Worthy, And After All Our Most Pleasing Responsibility. To Cherish What Remains Of It And To Foster Its Renewal Is Our Only Hope.
Nature
Responsibility
Garden
The Difference Between A Path And A Road Is Not Only The Obvious One. A Path Is Little More Than A Habit That Comes With Knowledge Of A Place. It Is A Sort Of Ritual Of Familiarity. As A Form, It Is A Form Of Contact With A Known Landscape. It Is Not Destructive. It Is The Perfect Adaptation, Through Experience And Familiarity, Of Movement To Place; It Obeys The Natural Contours; Such Obstacles As It Meets It Goes Around.
Differences
Perfect
Movement
I Would Consider Myself Simply A Critic Of The Market Economy. My Standard Isn't Primarily Political. First Of All, It's Ecological. And Then I Get To Matters That Are Social And Cultural.
Political
Matter
Firsts
The Music, While It Lasted, Brought A New World Into Being.
World
New World
Ask The Questions That Have No Answers. Invest In The Millenium. Plant Sequoias.
Answers
Plant
Asks
I Am Speaking Of The Life Of A Man Who Knows That The World Is Not Given By His Fathers, But Borrowed From His Children; Who Has Undertaken To Cherish It And Do It No Damage, Not Because He Is Duty-bound, But Because He Loves The World And Loves His Children...
Nature
Children
Father
You've Got To Reach Towards A Better Language, And You're Not Going To Make It Up From Scratch; You've Got To Reach Back Into The Tradition. Western Tradition Is Not As Impoverished As A Lot Of People Would Like To Think, But You'd Have To Go Back Before The Industrial Revolution; You May Have To Go Back Farther Than That. Of Course, The Bible Has A Perfectly Adequate Language, But It's Suffered A Lot Of Thoughtless Wear.
Thinking
People
Scratches
The Law Is Meant To Work For Justice. But People Who Know Themselves Know That, At Some Point, Justice Had Better Be Mitigated By Mercy. And You Don't Get To Mercy By A Legal Principle. You Get To Mercy By Way Of Imagination, Sympathy, Tenderness Of Heart - Which Are Not Weaknesses.
Heart
Law
People
In Losing Stewardship We Lose Fellowship; We Become Outcasts From The Great Neighborhood Of Creation.
Environmental
Fellowship
Losing
If The Devil Doesn't Exist... How Do You Explain That Some People Are A Lot Worse Than They're Smart Enough To Be?
Smart
People
Devil
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
Returning From The Wilderness A Man Becomes A Restorer Of Order, A Preserver. He Sees The Truth, Recognizes His True Heir, Honors His Forbears And His Heritage, And Gives His Blessing To His Successors. He Embodies The Passing Of Human Time, Living And Dying Within The Human Limits Of Grief And Joy.
Grief
Blessing
Men
These Are People Who Are Capable Of Devotion, Public Devotion, To Justice. They Meant What They Said And Every Day That Passes, They Mean It More.
Mean
People
Justice
The Problems Are Our Lives. In The "developed" Countries, At Least, The Large Problems Occur Because All Of Us Are Living Either Partly Wrong Or Almost Entirely Wrong. It Was Not Just The Greed Of Corporate Shareholders And The Hubris Of Corporate Executives That Put The Fate Of Prince William Sound Into One Ship; It Was Also Our Demand That Energy Be Cheap And Plentiful.
Country
Fate
Greed
I Have Always Loved A Window, Especially An Open One.
Window
But The Sower Going Forth To Sow Sets Foot Into Time To Come, The Seeds Falling On His Own Place. He Has Prepared A Way For His Life To Come To Him, If It Will. Like A Tree, He Has Given Roots To The Earth, And Stands Free.
Fall
Cutting
Roots
The Country Where He Lives Is Haunted By The Ghost Of An Old Forest. In The Cleared Fields Where He Gardens And Pastures His Horses It Stood Once, And Will Return. There Will Be A Resurrection Of The Wild. Already It Stands In Wait At The Pasture Fences.
Country
Horse
Past
A Sustainable Agriculture Is One Which Depletes Neither The People Nor The Land.
Land
Agriculture
People
The Road Is A Word, Conceived Elsewhere And Laid Across The Country In The Wound Prepared For It: A Word Made Concrete And Thrust Among Us.
Country
Made
Concrete
Young Lovers See A Vision Of The World Redeemed By Love. That Is The Truest Thing They Ever See, For Without It Life Is Death.
Vision
World
Lovers
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
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
An Economy Genuinely Local And Neighborly Offers To Localities A Measure Of Security That They Cannot Derive From A National Or A Global Economy Controlled By People Who, By Principle, Have No Local Commitment.
Commitment
People
Principles
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
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
What Could Be More Superstitious Than The Idea That Money Brings Forth Food?
Ideas
Superstitious
After A While, Though The Grief Did Not Go Away From Us, It Grew Quiet. What Had Seemed A Storm Wailing Through The Entire Darkness Seemed To Come In At Last And Lie Down.
Lying
Grief
Darkness
As Long As We Insist On Relating To It Strictly On Our Own Terms-as Strange To Us Or Subject To Us-the Wilderness Is Alien, Threatening, Fearful. We Have No Choice Then But To Become Its Exploiters, And To Lose, By Consequence, Our Place In It. It Is Only When, By Humility, Openness, Generosity, Courage, We Make Ourselves Able To Relate To It On Its Terms That It Ceases To Be Alien.
Humility
Long
Generosity
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
To Go In The Dark With A Light Is To Know The Light. To Know The Dark, Go Dark. Go Without Sight, And Find That The Dark, Too, Blooms And Sings, And Is Traveled By Dark Feet And Dark Wings.
Dark
Light
Sight
Because By Definition They Lack Any Sense Of Mutuality Or Wholeness, Our Specializations Subsist On Conflict With One Another. The Rule Is Never To Cooperate, But Rather To Follow One's Own Interest As Far As Possible. Checks And Balances Are All Applied Externally, By Opposition, Never By Self-restraint. Labor, Management, The Military, The Government, Etc., Never Forbear Until Their Excesses Arouse Enough Opposition To Force Them To Do So.
Military
Government
Self
When Despair For The World Grows In Me... I Come Into The Presence Of Still Water. And I Feel Above Me The Day-blind Stars Waiting With Their Light. For A Time I Rest In The Grace Of The World, And Am Free.
Stars
Light
Water
The More Artificial A Human Environment Becomes, The More The Word ‘natural’ Becomes A Term Of Value.
Environment
Natural
Term
Our Children No Longer Learn How To Read The Great Book Of Nature From Their Own Direct Experience, Or How To Interact Creatively With The Seasonal Transformations Of The Planet. They Seldom Learn Where Their Water Come From Or Where It Goes. We No Longer Coordinate Our Human Celebration With The Great Liturgy Of The Heavens.
Nature
Children
Book
A Man With A Machine And Inadequate Culture Is A Pestilence.
Men
Culture
Machines
As I Have Read The Gospels Over The Years, The Belief Has Grown In Me That Christ Did Not Come To Found An Organized Religion But Came Instead To Found An Unorganized One. He Seems To Have Come To Carry Religion Out Of The Temples Into The Fields And Sheep Pastures, Onto The Roadsides And The Banks Of The Rivers, Into The Houses Of Sinners And Publicans, Into The Town And The Wilderness, Toward The Membership Of All That Is Here. Well, You Can Read And See What You Think.
Thinking
Sheep
Years
The World Is So Full And Abundant It Is Like A Pregnant Woman Carrying A Child In One Arm And Leading Another By The Hand. Every Puddle In The Lane Is Ringed With Sipping Butterflied That Fly Up In Flutter When You Walk Past In The Late Morning On Your Way To Get The Mail.
Morning
Children
Past
To Hear Of A Thousand Deaths In War Is Terrible, And We 'know' That It Is. But As It Registers On Our Hearts, It Is Not More Terrible Than One Death Fully Imagined.
War
Heart
Terrible
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
Sabbath Observance Invites Us To Stop. It Invites Us To Rest. It Asks Us To Notice That While We Rest, The World Continues Without Our Help. It Invites Us To Delight In The World's Beauty And Abundance.
Delight
World
Helping
There Is Change By Necessity Or Adaptation, And There Is Contrived Change Or Novelty.
Novelty
Internet
Adaptation
Let Me Say And Not Mourn: The World Lives In The Death Of Speech And Sings There.
World
Speech
Let Me
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.
Men
Community
Progress
Invest In The Millenium.
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
If Love Could Force My Own Thoughts Over The Edge Of The World And Out Of Time, Then Could I Not See How Even Divine Omnipotence Might By The Force Of Its Own Love Be Swayed Down To The World? ...how It Might, Because It Could Know Its Own Creatures Only By Compassion, Put On Mortal Flesh, Become A Man, And Walk Among Us, Assume Our Nature And Our Fate, Suffer Our Faults And Our Death?
Fate
Love Is
Men
Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer
Computer
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
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
People Talk About "job Creation," As If That Had Ever Been The Aim The Industrial Economy. The Aim Was To Replace People With Machines.
Jobs
People
Machines
The Line That Connects The Bombing Of Civilian Populations To The Mountain Removed By Strip Mining ... To The Tortured Prisoner Seems To Run Pretty Straight. We're Living, It Seems, In The Culmination Of A Long Warfare - Warfare Against Human Beings, Other Creatures And The Earth Itself.
Running
Long
Mountain
We Have Forgotten That Vietnam, And Iraq Resent Being Invaded And Know The Ground Better Than We Do.
Iraq
Vietnam
Forgotten
The "developed" Nations Had Given To The "free Market" The Status Of A God, And Were Sacrificing To It Their Farmers, Farmlands, And Communities, Their Forests, Wetlands, And Prairies, Their Ecosystems And Watersheds. They Had Accepted Universal Pollution And Global Warming As Normal Costs Of Doing Business.
Sacrifice
Ecosystems
Community
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
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
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
Monsanto Doesn't Care About Feeding The World. We Have To Think About The Wage Slavery Of Migrant Workers And Salary Slavery Of Those Who Are Desperately Unhappy.
Freedom
Thinking
Unhappy
Always In The Big Woods When You Leave Familiar Ground And Step Off Alone Into A New Place There Will Be, Along With The Feelings Of Curiosity And Excitement, A Little Nagging Of Dread. It Is The Ancient Fear Of The Unknown, And It Is Your First Bond With The Wilderness You Are Going Into.
Challenges
Feelings
Risk
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
We Have Neglected The Truth That A Good Farmer Is A Craftsman Of The Highest Order, A Kind Of Artist.
Artist
Order
Kind
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
Eating Is An Agricultural Act.
Agriculture
Environment
Eating
You Can't Be A Critic By Simply Being A Griper. One Has Also To Search Out The Examples Of Good Work.
Example
Good Work
Critics
The Ability To Speak Exactly Is Intimately Related To The Ability To Know Exactly.
Exactly Is
Speak
Ability
It's The Impeded Stream That Sings
Wisdom
Streams
The Good Of The Whole Of Creation, The World And All Its Creatures Together, Is Never A Consideration Because It Is Never Thought Of; Our Culture Now Simply Lacks The Means For Thinking Of It.
Mean
Thinking
Together
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.


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