# Quote — Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House

> When the possessions and households of citizens are no longer honored by the acts, as well as the principles, of their government, then the concentration camp ceases to be one of the possibilities of human nature and becomes one of its likelihoods.

- Author: [Wendell Berry](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry.md)
- Book: [The Long-Legged House](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/the-long-legged-house.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry#The_Long-Legged_House_(1969)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/the-long-legged-house/when-the-possessions

## More from this book

> We have become blind to the alternatives to violence. This involves us in a sort of official madness, in which, while following what seems to be a perfect logic of self-defense and deterrence, we commit one absurdity after another: We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to "win the hearts and minds of the people" by poisoning their crops and burning their villages and confining them in concentration camps; we seek to uphold the "truth" of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations. … I have come to the realization that I can no longer imagine a war that I would believe to be either useful or necessary. I would be against any war.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/the-long-legged-house/we-have-become.md)

> Wars have never made peace or preserved it or fostered its ideals. To have peace you must make peace with your enemy. To make peace only with your friends is to avoid the issue, and to permit a great principle to become absurd. Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/the-long-legged-house/wars-have-never.md)

> The rule, acknowledged or not, seems to be that if we have great power we must use it. We would use a steam shovel to pick up a dime. We have experts who can prove there is no other way to do it.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/the-long-legged-house/the-rule-acknowledged.md)