A Quote by Wendell Berry

Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat. — © Wendell Berry
Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat.
The economy is still substantially that of the fur trade, still based on the same general kinds of commercial items: technology, weapons, ornaments, novelties, and drugs. The one great difference is that by now the revolution has deprived the mass of consumers of any independent access to the staples of life: clothing, shelter, food, even water. Air access remains the only necessity that the average user can still get for himself, and the revolution has imposed a heavy tax on that by way of pollution. Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat.
Contrary to received wisdom, the British are not an insular people in the conventional sense - far from it. For most of their early modern and modern history, they have had more contact with more parts of the world than almost any other nation - it is just that this contact has regularly taken the form of aggressive military and commercial enterprise.
Ideological pressure is much more crippling than commercial pressure. Crippling to your own freedom of thinking and creating, crippling the final results. If you wanted to succeed during the really hard-line totalitarian regime, you have to make so many compromises to please the censors that you don't recognize the original idea from the final result.
To be honest, I was never expecting to be in a World Cup final, a Euro final, a Champions League final, a Europa League final. I've done much more than I dreamt, and that's incredible.
America means far more than a continent bounded by two oceans. It is more than pride of military power, glory in war, or in victory. It means more than vast expanse of farms, of great factories or mines, magnificent cities, or millions of automobiles and radios.
Peace is costly to the profits of the military/security complex. Washington's gigantic military and security interests are far more powerful than the peace lobby.
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
I don't accept defeat as final. Only death is final - and even then I hope for a reprieve.
There are more than 3500 military and commercial aircraft pilot reports of encounters worldwide; many cases have corroborating radar documentation and multiple witnesses both on the ground and in the air.
The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest.
People talk about the pain of defeat, but I think defeat has a lot of value. I think the wound of victory can be even more damaging than defeat. Very few people really know how to win.
In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time. [But you must know enough to realise this, lest you focus more on the defeat than finding the lesson you paid for with the defeat. With every defeat and mistake, you have the logical right to get excited about the future when you will understand and be able to apply the lessons and thereby turn defeat and temporary failure into victory and permanent success.]
For years, even before 9/11, I've been trying to warn that the threat from amateur biolabs will ultimately turn out to be far more troublesome than leakage from military labs - perhaps even more costly and deadly than nuclear terrorism.
Childbirth is more admirable than conquest, more amazing than self-defense, and as courageous as either one.
The final conquest of poverty is within our grasp.
Empires won by conquest have always fallen either by revolt within or by defeat by a rival.
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