quote · Legacy record
The essential cultural discrimination is not between having and not having or haves and have-nots, but between the superfluous and the indispensable. Wisdom, it seems to me, is always poised upon the knowledge of minimums; it might be thought to be the art of minimums. Granting the frailty, and no doubt the impermanence, of modern technology as a human contrivance, the man who can keep a fire in a stove or on a hearth is not only more durable, but wiser, closer to the meaning of fire, than the man who can only work a thermostat.
The essential cultural discrimination is not between having and not having or haves and have-nots, but between the superfluous and the indispensable. Wisdom, it seems to me, is always poised upon the knowledge of minimums; it might be thought to be the art of minimums. Granting the frailty, and no doubt the impermanence, of modern technology as a human contrivance, the man who can keep a fire in a stove or on a hearth is not only more durable, but wiser, closer to the meaning of fire, than the man who can only work a thermostat.
Approximate author period: c. 1934 AD · modern
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- Author or tradition
- Wendell Berry
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1934 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from documented birth year 1934; activity date not established; Wikidata Q533505, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q533505 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 367614; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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