Joe DeWitte

“I was glad enough that I had not become a preacher, and so would not have to go through a war pretending that Jesus had not told us to love our enemies.”
― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

“The worst temptation of religious people has always been to publish and punish the sins of (other) sinners in this world, with no patience or deference for the judgment of God.”
― Wendell Berry, The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice

“War prevails over peace, I imagine, finally because it brings an apparently simple end to the great burden of civilized thought.”
― Wendell Berry, The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice

“I am writing in another age of violence when, again beyond my understanding, gunmen have killed children in their schools and we continue to kill children in war. I can only ask the obvious question: How and how soon, from the high threshold of violence established by the Civil War in the seceded states and Kentucky, might a people be expected to descend to a level even of approximate peace? Or: How might they prevent the militarily acceptable violence of any war from inspiring and excusing unacceptable violence during and after the war?”
― Wendell Berry, The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice