Wendell Berry Quotes

There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who "love Nature" while deploring the "artificialities" with which "Man has spoiled Nature.'" The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of "Nature" : but beavers and their dams are.

I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

Glorification of the 'natural' is part of the ideology which protects an unnatural society in its struggle against liberation.

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.

To be modern is to destroy nature.

We're a part of nature. As we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves. It's a selfish thing to want to protect nature.

We have, in a sense, lorded it over nature, over Sister Earth, over Mother Earth, i think man has gone too far.

Nature is telling us that if you don't respect the environment then you are living with artificial needs and a consumerism that is destroying the very conditions we need to survive.

Putting something called Nature on a pedestal and admiring it from afar does for the environment what patriarchy does for the figure of Woman. It is paradoxical act of sadistic admiration.

Nature, as man has always known it, he knows no more. Since he has learned to esteem signs above symbols, to suppress his emotional reactions in favor of practical ones and make use of nature instead of holding so much of it sacred, he has altered the face, if not the heart, of reality.

We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.

The future will belong to the nature-smart-those individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the natural world and who balance the virtual with the real. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.

This earth is a garden, this life a banquet, and it's time we realized that it was given to all life, animal and man, to enjoy.

Everything is poisoned, and it's all poisoned from greed. I think our inability to communicate with each other and everything that's happening in the world is all a symptom of our greater inability to deal with nature appropriately.

Praise the green earth. Chance has appointed her home, workshop, larder, middenpit. Her lousy skin scabbed here and there by cities provides us with name and nation.

We have a responsibility toward the other life-forms of our planet whose continued existence is threatened by the thoughtless behavior of our own human species. . . . Environmental responsibility – for if there is no God, then, obviously, it is up to us to put things right.

Natural isn't something I get called a lot in Texas.

The planet is fine. The people are f****d. Because everyone is trying to save the planet. The planet doesn’t need that. The planet will take care of itself. People are selfish. And that's what they're doing is trying to save the planet for themselves to have a nicer place to live.

We humans still have a long way to go with learning to live harmoniously with our environment and its wildlife.

We are killing our host the planet Earth.... I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the 'AIDS of the Earth.' I make no apologies for that statement.... We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.

Modern man no longer regards Nature as in any sense divine and feels perfectly free to behave toward her as an overweening conqueror and tyrant.

If we had kept the vision of interconnectedness, we would not have created the kind of environmental crisis facing the world today.

It were happy if we studied nature more in natural things; and acted according to nature, whose rules are few, plain, and most reasonable.

We have come to look at our planet as a resource for our species, which is funny when you think that the planet has been around for about five billion years, and Homo sapiens for perhaps one hundred thousand. We have acquired an arrogance about ourselves that I find frightening. We have come to feel that we are so far apart from the rest of nature that we have but to command.

Experience shows that disregard for the environment always harms human coexistence, and vice versa. It becomes more and more evident that there is an inseparable link between peace with creation and peace among men.