Wendell Berry’s Wisdom

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“The idea that we live in something called ‘the environment’ is utterly preposterous. . . . 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.”
~ Wendell Berry

I loved this quote when I saw it, and often say very similar things, but as I can’t find the actual origin, just people like me sharing it, I can’t guarantee that it really was said by Wendell Berry himself. And as they say, just because we saw it on the internet…

Yet, even if he didn’t say it, the words are true! Without a clean healthy environment, without clean air and water, without unpolluted food (all provided by mother earth with a bit of attention from ourselves) we cannot possibly be healthy ourselves.

What we do to the air, water, food, and planet, we do to ourselves.

Here is a verified Wendell Berry quote from the full Bill Moyers interview for you:

“And there’s no justification for the permanent destruction of the world. My belief and I’ve written out of it for many years is that the world and our life in it are conditional gifts. We have the world to live in and the use of it to live from on the condition that we will take good care of it. And to take good care of it we have to know it and we have to know how to take care of it. And to know it and to be willing to take care of it, we have to love it. And we’ve ignored all that all these years.”

Wendell Berry on His Hopes for Humanity from Bill Moyers

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Full show with Transcript:

Encore: Wendell Berry, Poet & Prophet

Wendell Berry books:
http://www.wendellberrybooks.com