Worth Quoting

From Wendell Berry's 1993 Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community:

On the problem of current economic system--  But we must begin by giving up any idea that we can bring about these healings without fundamental changes in the way we think and live.  We face a choice that is starkly simple: we must change or be changed.  If we fail to change for the better, then we will be changed for the worse.  We cannot blunder our way into health by the same sad and foolish hopes by which we have blundered into disease.  We must see that the standardless aims of industrial communism and industrial capitalism equally have failed.  The aims of productivity, profitability, efficiency, limitless growth, limitless wealth, limitless power, limitless mechanization and automation can enrich and empower the few (for a while), but they will sooner or later ruin us all.  The gross national product and the corporate bottom line are utterly meaningless as measures of the prosperity or health of the country.--"Conservation and Local Economy"

On the sustainability of cities--(a list) XVIII. In order to make ecological good sense for the planet, you must make ecological good sense locally.  You can't act locally by thinking globally.
XX.The right scale in work gives power to affection.  When one works beyond the reach of one's love for the place one is working in and for the things and creatures one is working with and among, then destruction inevitably results.  An adequate local culture, among other things, keeps work within the reach of love--"Out of Your Car, Off Your Horse"

On true conservation-- ...[T]he love of nature that limits itself to the love of places that are "scenic" is implicitly dangerous.  It is dangerous because it tends to exclude unscenic places from nature and from the respect we sometimes accord to nature.  This is why so much of the landscape that is productively used is also abused; it is used solely according to standards dictated by the financial system and not at all according to standards dictated by the nature of the place.  Moreover, as we are beginning to see, it is going to be extremely difficult to make enough parks to preserve vulnerable species and the health of ecosystems or large watersheds.

The idea that we live in something called "the environment," for instance, is utterly preposterous.  This word came into use because of the pretentiousness of learned experts who were embarrassed by the religious associations of "Creation" and who thought "world" too mundane.  But "environment" means that which surrounds or encircles us; it means a world separate from ourselves, outside us.  The real state of things, of course, is far more complex and intimate and interesting than that.  The world that environs us, that is around us, is also within us.  We are made of it; we eat, drink, and breathe it; it is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.  It is also a Creation, a holy mystery, made for and to some extent by creatures, some but by no means all of whom are humans.  This world, this Creation, belongs in a limited sense to us, for we may rightfully require certain things of it--the things necessary to keep us fully alive as the kind of creature we are--but we also belong to it, and it makes certain rightful claims on us: that we care properly for it, that we leave it undiminished not just to our children but to all the creatures who will live in it after us.  None of this intimacy and responsibility is conveyed by the word environment.--"Conservation is Good Work"

On the first Gulf War--...Peace is not the result of war, any more than love is the result of hate or generosity the result of greed.
And--War always encourages a patriotism that means not love of country but unquestioning obedience to power. --"Peaceableness Toward Enemies"

On stupid views of sex--Sex, like any other necessary, precious, and volatile power that is commonly held, is everybody's business.  A way must be found to entitle everybody's legitimate interest in it without either violating its essential privacy or allowing its unrestrained energies to reduce necessary public procedures to the level of a private quarrel.  for sexual problems and potentialities that have a more-than-private interest, what is needed are common or shared forms and solutions that are not, in the usual sense, public. --"Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community"