Born in 1934 – Wendell Berry, American novelist, short story writer, poet, farmer, and essayist.

From the 1971 essay, “In Defense of Literacy”:
“We are dependent, for understanding, and for consolation and hope, upon what we learn of ourselves from songs and stories. This has always been so, and it will not change…The mastery of language and the knowledge of books is not an ornament, but a necessity. It is impractical only by the standards of quick profit and easy power. Longer perspective will show that it alone can preserve in us the possibility of an accurate judgment of ourselves, and the possibilities of correction and renewal. Without it, we are adrift in the present, in the wreckage of yesterday, in the nightmare of tomorrow.”

Previously: Berry, here and here.