Gene Logsdon > Quotes

“Why does no one speak of the cultural advantages of the country? For example, is a well groomed, ecologically kept, sustainably fertile farm any less cultural, any less artful, than paintings of fat angels on church ceilings?”
― Gene Logsdon, Living at Nature's Pace: Farming and the American Dream

“Sustainable farms are to today's headlong rush toward global destruction what the monasteries were to the Dark Ages: places to preserve human skills and crafts until some semblance of common sense and common purpose returns to the public mind.”
― Gene Logsdon, Living at Nature's Pace: Farming and the American Dream

“As a working definition of art, I lean toward Tolstoy's: "Art is a human activity having for it's purpose the transmission to other of the highest and best feelings to which mankind has risen." It seems to me that, regarding agrarian art, the farther it moves away from the natural world, especially when the main goal is money profits, the more difficult it becomes for it to reflect "the highest and best feelings" of humanity. The same is true of, of course, of agriculture itself. The farther it tries to remove itself from nature in search of money, the more it moves away from the highest and healthiest kinds of food.”
― Gene Logsdon, The Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse

“Small is not beautiful unless small is skilled and dedicated.”
― Gene Logsdon, Living at Nature's Pace: Farming and the American Dream

“Curiously, only in sports do we agree to eschew technological advances, making rules, for example, to limit the power potential of baseball bats. We understand that technology will ruin our games, but we do not understand that it can also ruin cultures.”
― Gene Logsdon, At Nature's Pace: Farming and the American Dream

“There are many more ways we can adapt. For example, instead of using up our energies harping about big farmers (whom of course we need right now to provide enough food for all of us), buy your own little patch of land to turn into an oasis of food and wildlife abundance. More and more people are doing this rather than standing around wringing their hands about global warming. Your little sanctuary will not be prone to disappear when the inevitable financial crises hit the big commercial farms.”
― Gene Logsdon, Gene Everlasting: A Contrary Farmer's Thoughts on Living Forever

“The problems will be mostly resolved once everyone understands how cities and farms are parts of a whole, not divisible one from another. When we all realize that, as we munch our good, fresh food, it will not only mean a better environment for all, but the end to this silly political anger that colors everything blue or red instead of a lovely productive green. Another”
― Gene Logsdon, Letter to a Young Farmer: How to Live Richly without Wealth on the New Garden Farm

“The joy of the open fireplace is playing with fire without being accused of playing with fire.”
― Gene Logsdon, You Can Go Home Again: Adventures of a Contrary Life