# Quote — Wendell Berry, Life Is a Miracle

> Never forget: We are alive within mysteries.

- Author: [Wendell Berry](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry.md)
- Book: [Life Is a Miracle](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/life-is-a-miracle.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry#Life_Is_A_Miracle_:_An_Essay_Against_Modern_Superstition_(2000)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/life-is-a-miracle/never-forget-we-are

## More from this book

> We are alive within mystery, by miracle. "Life," wrote Erwin Chargaff, "is the continual intervention of the inexplicable." We have more than we can know. We know more than we can say. The constructions of language (which is to say the constructions of thought) are formed within experience, not the other way around. Finally we live beyond words, as also we live beyond computation and beyond theory. There is no reason whatever to assume that the languages of science are less limited than other languages.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/life-is-a-miracle/we-are-alive.md)

> Reductionism (ultimately, the empirical explanability of everything and a cornerstone of science), has uses that are appropriate, and it also can be used inappropriately. It is appropriately used as a way (one way) of understanding what is empirically known or empirically knowable. When it becomes merely an intellectual "position" confronting what is not empirically known or knowable, then it becomes very quickly absurd, and also grossly desensitizing and false.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/life-is-a-miracle/reductionism-ultimately-the.md)

> We know enough of our own history by now to be aware that people exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love. To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/life-is-a-miracle/we-know-enough.md)