Wendell Berry Environmental Quotations

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

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.

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.

We will instead have to measure our economy by the health of the ecosystems and human communities where we do our work.

In losing stewardship we lose fellowship; we become outcasts from the great neighborhood of creation.

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.

If we do not serve what coheres and endures, we serve what disintegrates and destroys.

You cannot affirm the power plant and condemn the smokestack, or affirm the smoke and condemn the cough

The earth is what we all have in common.

... 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.