Quote: What is good for the world is good for us
January 27th, 2006 | Published in Agrarianism, Life, Quotes
We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumptions 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 to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.
—Wendell Berry, “A Native Hill” in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (2002), p. 20