Farmer Quotes & Sayings

The first thing that strikes you about Timothy Murphys verse is the palpable texture of his line - that sound of sense practised by that other American poet-farmer, Robert Frost. And just as Murphys ear is trained on the rhythms of local speech and classical epigram, his eye holds fast on the image. This is an undeluded vision, sometimes bleak, often funny, and never less than painstakingly crafted. — Michael Donaghy

In a world riven by inequity, medicine could be viewed as social justice work. — Paul Farmer

A farmer's work is more like that of a horse trainer than a mechanic, more like that of a healer than a computer repairperson. It is not really accurate to say that farmers grow food or raise animals. Farmers alter environmental conditions in such a way as to maximize a plant's or an animal's innate ability to do its own growing -- in the same way that the best horse trainers seek to draw out abilities already within their horses or in the way the best healers know when to stand back and let their patients' bodies do the work. There is mystery in farming. — Ben Hartman

A writing in the sand which all may read but few understand. - Philip Jose Farmer in 'Riders of the Purple Wage — Philip Jose Farmer

It came down to so many factors: an underdog who refused to surrender, a presumed victor who refused to fight, disgruntled Democrats - on the left and right - who, by deserting their party, merely strengthened it, and fearful Republican farmers, who in the end, proved more farmer than Republican. — David Pietrusza

Laws were made to establish a gradation of ranks; but it was soon found that the soil of America was opposed to a territorial aristocracy. To bring that refractory land into cultivation, the constant and interested exertions of the owner himself were necessary; and when the ground was prepared, its produce was found to be insufficient to enrich a proprietor and a farmer at the same time. The land was then naturally broken up into small portions, which the proprietor cultivated for himself. Land is the basis of an aristocracy, which clings to the soil that supports it; for it is not by privileges alone, nor by birth, but by landed property handed down from generation to generation, that an aristocracy is constituted. A nation may present immense fortunes and extreme wretchedness; but unless those fortunes are territorial, there is no true aristocracy, but simply the class of the rich and that of the poor. — Alexis De Tocqueville

As a farmer, man himself became closely attached to the landscape, firmly rooted to the soil that supported him. At times the soil seemed bountiful and kindly and again stubborn and unfriendly, but it was always a challenge to man's cunning. — Charles Kellogg

There comes a point when a dream becomes reality and reality becomes a dream. — Frances Farmer

Buying from a local farmer can mean that he makes a two-hour extra truck drive, which can damage the environment more than a bunch of bananas on a boat. — Tyler Cowen

I'm a farmer's market girl, so if you go and get beautiful, fresh fruit, that's local, and it hasn't been frozen yet, it's pretty fantastic. — Tracee Ellis Ross

Farmer Giles went home feeling very uncomfortable. He was finding that a local reputation may require keeping up, and that may prove awkward. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Human beings are part of nature. Anything they do is natural. It's impossible for anything in nature to do anything unnatural. — Philip Jose Farmer

A farmer who neglects to sow ordinary seeds only loses the crop, whereas anyone who forgets to sow seeds of a crop that has already been harvested twelve months before risks disturbing the entire fabric of causality, not to mention acute embarrassment. — Terry Pratchett

She took to reading with a fervor so extreme, Baba Joseph had to take the books from her hands by force. 'Your eyes are not tractors. They are not meant to pull heavy loads,' he said sternly. — Nancy Farmer

The diligent farmer plants trees, of which he himself will never see the fruit. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

For being good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it & sometimes break in two. I've known a few. You work twice as hard to be a farmer as to be his hog. — Ray Bradbury

We, who are the living, possess the past. Tomorrow is for our martyrs. — James L. Farmer Jr.

I can write a program that lets you break the copy protection on a music file. But I can't write a program that solders new connections onto a chip for you. — Dan Farmer

A farmer does not grow something in the sense that he or she creates it. That human is only a small part of the whole process by which nature expresses its being. — Masanobu Fukuoka

the farmer's almanac, pieces of stick candy, and Grandma's snuff box. I saw him reach into the fireplace once with his bare hand, remove a live coal, and light his pipe. He must have had leather for skin. One day, I looked out to the field to the east of the house and saw a cloud of dust rising from a thrashing machine. Men were gathered around with wagons, pitch — Lanier Davis

It is with this surety that we must stand with Haiti, a country whose spirit and people will never be broken, and work in solidarity toward the future the Haitian people deserve. — Paul Farmer

I have always admired the work of Phil Farmer and was glad for the chance to work with him. Readers today may be too young to remember his classics like The Lovers. — Piers Anthony

Retail is selling things that don't come back to customers who do. — Tony Farmer

There's no beginning to the farmer's year, / Only recurrent patterns on a scroll / Unwinding ... — Vita Sackville-West

It is thought that the changeover from hunter to farmer was a slow, gradual process. — Stephen Gardiner

The Prince had fallen in love. She was only a farmer's daughter, but she was was beautiful, and also smart, as the daughters of farmers need to be, for farms are complicated businesses. — Patrick Ness

I'm envious of people who can sleep as long as they want. I have the circadian rhythm of a farmer. — Moby

The largest business in American handled by a woman is the Money Order Department of the Pittsburgh Post-office; Mary Steel has it in charge. — Lydia Hoyt Farmer

The way I see it, the difference between farmers and suburbanites is the difference in the way we feel about dirt. To them, the earth is something to be respected and preserved, but dirt gets no respect. A farmer likes dirt. Suburbanites like to get rid of it. Dirt is the working layer of earth, and dealing with dirt is as much a part of farm life as dealing with manure. Neither is user-friendly but both are necessary. — E.L. Konigsburg

The rain has spoiled the farmer's day;
Shall sorrow put my books away?
Thereby are two days lost. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bradenton reminded him of an old farmer, walking the perimeter of his property every day, testing the fences and peering suspiciously at his neighbors, making sure that his side and their side were clearly delineated. It had taken Oliver years to learn his lesson: keep quiet and let men like Bradenton test the fences. It wouldn't do them any good, and if you were careful, one day you'd be in a position to buy their whole damned farm. And so Oliver held his tongue and smiled. — Courtney Milan

There are times, like after a long day of work, when the thought of an easy drive-through is enticing. But then I remember how crappy I felt when I ate fast food in the past, and it inspires me to head to the grocery store or my local farmer's market and whip up an easy but healthier option. — Alison Sweeney

Some people talk about Haiti as being the graveyard of development projects. — Paul Farmer

It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane. — Philip Jose Farmer

He turned on to the track and wondered why no birds were singing. The only sound he could hear was the buzz and rattle of a drill, which he assumed to be the farmer doing something to a fence. It was, in fact, a woodpecker whose presence would have thrilled him had he known what it was. — Ruth Rendell

I don't know much about climate change. But I'm pretty sure we better figure out what to do to lessen its impact - at least its health impact - and that's not going to happen unless you have a lot of young talent interested in these topics. — Paul Farmer

The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world. — Paul Farmer

Let me go!" She tore off a mirror and brandished it in his face. "I mean it! I don't want to go to your godforsaken hellbarn, you retarded psycho farmer! — Gina Damico

Barry Crump wrote a lot of books and they were really special. They were kind of the quintessential, mild for the most part, kind of southern man, kind of the true heart of what it meant to be a Kiwi kind of farmer; very kind of outdoor man living off the land. That kind of thing, you don't see so much anymore these days with everyone being metrosexual and lattes and laptops. — Rhys Darby

Whether you're a farmer, builder or engineer, the opportunities are equal: Just add a little innovation. — Strive Masiyiwa

In the purifying sweep of atheism human beings lost all special value. The numb misery of the horse was matched by that of the farmer; the once-green ferny lives crushed into coal's fossiliferous strata were no more anonymous and obliterated than Clarence's own life would soon be, in a wink of earth's tremendous time. Without Biblical blessing the physical universe became sherry horrible and disgusting. All fleshy acts became vile, rather than merely some. The reality of men slaying lambs and cattle, fish and fowl to sustain their own bodies took on an aspect of grisly comedy
the blood-soaked selfishness of a cosmic mayhem. — John Updike

Hi, I have just added my new novel, "Incessant Expectations" for your reading enjoyment. It is about commercial salmon fishing on the Oregon coast circa 1976. It is fiction. The industry doesn't exist anymore. A young farmer from the dry country in Southwestern Colorado visits the wet Northwestern Oregon coast, seeking a summer job after his dad's farm is sold in the spring. He has spent his first 22 years in isolation, doing hard labor on the family farm. He knows hard work but has little social experience. During his summer of 1976 he learns about the ocean, fishing, and women. — Kenneth Fenter

A farmer is always going to be rich next year. — Philemon

The reaction of the people below to this fantastic sight and sound was one of wild excitement. Details could be seen vividly from aloft. An elderly man and woman fell to their knees and prayed. People in the villages stood still and gaped upward. Most of them still had their Sunday finery on. "You could see people going to church...man, wife, and child walking along the country roads." Bombardier Herbert Light, through his binoculars, saw an open-air festival in progress, with the women dressed in colorful skirts and blouses. One of them threw her apron over her head in panic.
As they roared over the wheat fields, the first unfriendly acts occurred: farmers threw stones and pitchforks at them. One farmer leading two horses was startled by the advancing planes and leaped into a nearby stream. A girl swimming in another river was reported by ten separate crews. — Leon Wolff

I am she who lifts the mountains
When she goes to hunt,
Who wears mamba for a headband
And a lion for a belt.
Beware!
I swallow elephants whole
And pick my teeth with rhinoceros horns,
I drink up rivers to get at the hippos.
Let them hear my words!
Nhamo is coming
And her hunger is great.
I am she who tosses trees
Instead of spears.
The ostrich is my pillow
And the elephant is my footstool!
I am Nhamo
Who makes the river my highway
And sends crocodiles scurrying into the reeds! — Nancy Farmer

It's not that I have any moral compunctions about work ... but grampa may die to-morrow and he may live for ten years. Meanwhile we're living above our income and all we've got to show for it is a farmer's car and a few clothes. We keep an apartment that we've only lived in three months and a little old house way off in nowhere. We're frequently bored and yet we won't make any effort to know any one except the same crowd who drift around California all summer wearing sport clothes and waiting for their families to die. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The whole financial structure of Wall Street seems to rise or fall on the mere fact that the Federal Reserve Bank raises or lowers the amount of interest. Any business that can't survive a one percent change must be skating on thin ice.
Why even the poor farmer took a raise of another ten percent just to get a loan from the bank, and nobody from the government paid any attention. But you let Wall Street have a nightmare and the whole country has to help to get them back into bed again. — Will Rogers

Little sleep, no investment portfolio, no family around, no hot water. On an evening a few days after arriving in Cange, I wondered aloud what compensation he got for these various hardships. He told me, "If you're making sacrifices, unless you're automatically following some rule, it stands to reason that you're trying to lessen some psychic discomfort. So, for example, if I took steps to be a doctor for those who don't have medical care, it could be regarded as a sacrifice, but it could also be regarded as a way to deal with ambivalence." He went on, and his voice changed a little. He didn't bristle, but his tone had an edge: "I feel ambivalent about selling my services in a world where some can't buy them. You can feel ambivalent about that, because you should feel ambivalent. Comma." This was for me one of the first of many encounters with Farmer's — Tracy Kidder

I mean we grew up in a TB bus and I became a TB doctor. — Paul Farmer

Just say no to pillaging. — Nancy Farmer

Please, I do not wish to be rescued by a gentleman. Could you find a farmer or a shopkeep - anyone not of the gentry - and then do me a great favor of forgetting you saw me? — Cindy Anstey

As he left Yata's home that morning, he knew that a part of his life was complete and that whatever path he chose, he would experience the ache of unfulfilled dreams. For a moment he allowed himself to feel regret at the thought of never building a cottage by the river with Trevanion. Or living the life of a simple farmer connected to the earth. Or traveling his kingdom, satisfying the nomad he had become. To be Finnikin of the Rock and the Monts and the River and the Flatlands and the Forest. To be none of those at all.
Yet he also knew that to lose her to another man would be a slow torture every day for the rest of his life. — Melina Marchetta

She had stepped into the thin strip of earth that they claimed as their own. Bound by the last building on Brewster and a brick wall, they reigned in that unlit alley like dwarfed warrior kings. Born with the appendages of power, circumcised by the guillotine, and baptized with the steam from a million non reflective mirrors, these young men wouldn't be called upon to thrust a bayonet into an Asian farmer, target a torpedo, scatter their iron seed from a B-52 into the wound of the earth, point a finger to move a nation, or stick a pole into the moon
and they knew it. They only had that three-hundred-foot alley to serve them as stateroom, armored tank, and executioner's chamber. — Gloria Naylor

I was lucky to grow up at a time when it was not difficult for the child of a tenant farmer to make his way to the state university. — James Hansen

James 5:7b-8. 'See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near. — Gretchen Fields

Good stories come from the heart, not the head. — Ken Farmer

humans are endlessly stupid and greedy. — Nancy Farmer

In a way it was a modern story but it played to all those 1980 slasher movies. We did the same thing with this. Patrick wanted to do a 1970's road movie and if you'll see, this is a modern story but it's got so much 1970's in your face feel to it. So that was the point, to take that stuff that we loved growing up and sort of do it for today. I think we accomplished it. We'll see. — Todd Farmer

Times change. The farmer's daughter now tells jokes about the traveling salesman. — Carey Williams

Slow people are just paying close attention. — Nancy Farmer

Not all men are destined for greatness," I reminded him. "Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I changed the world today? — Robin Hobb

We were leaving a pleasant region, an Oriental farmer's paradise, that was more prosperous and secure under communist control than the area around Bong Son was under ARVN control. I wondered if the form of government really mattered to those peasant farmers. — Matthew Brennan

The shriek that erupted from Melinda was loud enough to wake the dead. "Get it off me, get it off me!" She bolted from the crumpled side of the tent in hysterics, ripping at her bodice. — Merry Farmer

Despite my vast interest in other universes and new ideas and space, travel and time travel, which by the way I think is impossible, the basic thing is human character, which is the main thing of most writers. — Philip Jose Farmer

I didn't want to be a chef: just a cook. And my experiences in Italy had taught me why. For millennia, people have known how to make their food. They have understood animals and what to do with them, have cooked with the seasons and had a farmer's knowledge of the way the planet works. They have preserved the conditions of preparing food, handed down through generations, and have come to know them as expressions of their families. People don't have this kind of knowledge today, even though it seems as fundamental as the earth, and, it's true, those who have it tend to be professionals
like chefs. But I didn't want this knowledge in order to be a professional; just to be more human. (313) — Bill Buford

Look," he tried, "put two men in a rail car, one a soldier, the other a farmer. One talks war, the other wheat; and bore each other to sleep. But let one spell long-distance running, and if the other once ran the mile, why, those men will run all night like boys, sparking a friendship up from memory. So, all men have one business in common: women, and can talk that till sunrise and beyond. Hell. — Ray Bradbury

God has ordered our existence to operate like a farmer planting seed in a field. If you pray and ask God for an oak tree, the Almighty might send you an acorn, because big things can come from small beginnings. God's answer may not look like your request. So when you get an acorn but were expecting a tree, don't throw the acorn away. Your tree is in the seed. God works through the agricultural principle of planting a seed and reaping a harvest. Your something small can become something mighty if you are a good steward of the seed. — T.D. Jakes

The good people of Dakota offered to give Calvin Coolidge a farm if he would live on it. I wouldn't advise you to give those people too much credit for generosity. There is not a farmer in any State in the West that wouldn't be glad to give him a farm if he will paint it, fix up the fences and keep up the series of mortgages that are on it. And if you think Coolidge ain't smart, you just watch him not take it. — Will Rogers

If he had known unstructured
space is a deluge
and stocked his log house-
boat with all the animals
even the wolves,
he might have floated.
But obstinate he
stated, The land is solid
and stamped,
watching his foot sink
down through the stone
up to his knee.
From Progressive insanities of a pioneer — Margaret Atwood

A farmer cannot think too much evil of a good farmer. — John Steinbeck

A king must protect his people from outsiders, from invaders, and lead his people to defend themselves - a king must be the first to thrust himself between the land and all danger, just as a farmer stands to defend his fields from any robber. But it is not his duty to dictate to them what their innermost hearts may do. — Marion Zimmer Bradley

Trust the horticulturalist: California's genius may be green, but it's underlying beauty is brown. — Jared Farmer

As the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain, the time will come when we too shall hold nothing back, but shall eagerly convert more than we now possess into means and powers, when we shall be willing to sow the sun and the moon for seeds. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We also pass a farmer in his yard, power-washing a donkey with a high-pressure hose. — Simon Armitage

As the traditional healer Makhosi Petros Hezekial Mtshali tells us, Ancestors are benevolent beings who love us. You are their legacy, and they want the best for their progeny. Their own evolution in the Otherworld depends upon the completion of unfinished business or making amends for unkind acts or deeds that they may have committed during their lifetime. — Steven D. Farmer

The farmer doesn't care for the pitchers' battle that resolves itself into a checkers game. The farmer loves the dramatic, and slugging is more dramatic than even the cleverest pitching. — Home Run Baker

We all have a stake - equally. Because if we do not save the environment and save the Earth, then whatever we do in civil rights or in a war against poverty will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction and the brotherhood of the grave. — James Farmer

Shut up about Leibniz for a moment, Rudy, because look here: You - Rudy - and I are on a train, as it were, sitting in the dining car, having a nice conversation, and that train is being pulled along at a terrific clip by certain locomotives named The Bertrand Russell and Riemann and Euler and others. And our friend Lawrence is running alongside the train, trying to keep up with us - it's not that we're smarter than he is, necessarily, but that he's a farmer who didn't get a ticket. And I, Rudy, am simply reaching out through the open window here, trying to pull him onto the fucking train with us so that the three of us can have a nice little chat about mathematics without having to listen to him panting and gasping for breath the whole way. — Neal Stephenson

Its the actions one produces that will lead them toward the unknown. — Steven Farmer

Haiti is always talking about decentralization and nothing has been so obvious, perhaps a weakness, as the centralized nature of Haitian society as being revealed by the earthquake. I mean, they lost all these medical training programs because they didn't have them anywhere else. — Paul Farmer

Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today? — Robin Hobb

I'm a semi-literate farmer and hired killer. I ain't in the power game. — John Marston

It is easy to conceive that a band of interested men, such as placemen, pensioners, lords of the bedchamber, lords of the kitchen, lords of the necessary-house, and the lord knows what besides, can find as many reasons for monarchy as their salaries, paid at the expense of the country, amount to; but if I ask the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and down through all the occupations of life to the common labourer, what service monarchy is to him? he can give me no answer. If I ask him what monarchy is, he believes it is something like a sinecure. — Thomas Paine

When someone says, 'Shut up, farmer,' it hurts. It's difficult to explain, but it hurts. — Brunello Cucinelli

And as we see from the parable of the farmer and his daughter who were travelling to Jericho in a wagon when they fell among thieves, and all was taken from them save some jewels that the daughter contrived to hide in her vagina. After the thieves had gone, she gave these jewels to her father, to raise his heart again. And her father said unto her: If only your mother was here. We could have saved the horse and the wagon also. — Robert Nye

As a farmer, you learn quick: You don't get anything that you don't work hard for. — Evan Thomas

Neither in theory nor in practice does one farmer in a hundred realize how important it is to cultivate, cultivate, and cultivate. — Albert Howard

Mr. False! No, don't start grabbing the chickens! Better off farmer with no chickens than a load of chickens with no farmer! Anyway, they'll probably float, or fly, or something! — Terry Pratchett

Last night, I had a telephone townhall for my constituents back in Vermont, and we had 11,500 people on it. And I had people on Social Security saying if getting fewer benefits will help us on the debt, they're for it. And I had a farmer saying that he's had subsidies for 35 years but we can't afford them anymore. — Peter Welch

It's this time of year when Kit mist rise in the dark, as if we're a farmer or a fisherman, someone whose livelihood depends on beating the dawn, convincing himself that what looks like night is actually morning. — Julia Glass

Thomas Jefferson presumed on the basis of colonial experience that farming and democracy are intimately connected. Cultivation of land meets the needs of the farmer, the neighbors, and the community, and and keeps people independent from domineering centralized powers. In Jefferson's time, [George] was the king. In ours, it's multinational corporations. — Barbara Kingsolver

Are we going to take the hands of the federal government completely off any effort to adjust the growing of national crops, and go right straight back to the old principle that every farmer is a lord of his own farm and can do anything he wants, raise anything, any old time, in any quantity, and sell any time he wants? — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Even if the music industry simply gave away all their music people would complain that they don't have the bandwidth to download all the stuff - the problem would merely shift from availability to distribution. — Dan Farmer

A woman who is perfectly woman is superior to a man who is imperfectly man, just as a farmer who is faithful to his land and performs his work perfectly is superior to a king who cannot do his own work, — Julius Evola

The secret of successful education ... is finding out how a particular person learns — Nancy Farmer

As noted in 1964 by Robert P. "Bob" Moses, director of the Mississippi project of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC): "It's not contradictory for a farmer to say he's nonviolent and also pledge to shoot a marauder's head off. — Charles E. Cobb

In 2011, the NASSCOM team introduced me to Aloke Bajpai, who, like others on his young team, cut his teeth working for Western technology companies but returned to India on a bet that he could start something - he just didn't know what. The result was Ixigo, a travel search service that can run on the cheapest cell phones and helps Indians book the lowest-cost fares, whether it is a farmer who wants to go by bus or train for a few rupees from Chennai to Bangalore or a millionaire who wants to go by plane to Paris. Ixigo is today the biggest travel search platform in India, with millions of users. To build it, Bajpai leveraged the supernova, using free open-source software, Skype, and cloud-based office tools such as Google Apps and social media marketing on Facebook. They "enabled us to grow so much faster with no money," he told me. It — Thomas L. Friedman

As long as we work within the budget and are responsible, which by the way it's amazing how many people aren't but we are. We've worked within the budget. We've worked within the time and we're making the movie that we want. That's the reward and I couldn't be happier. — Todd Farmer

One day the farmer's horse ran away. His neighbors cried "such bad luck" to which he replied "maybe." His horse returned the next day with three wild horses. His neighbors shouted "that's wonderful" and the old farmer replied "maybe." The next day his son rode one of the wild horses, fell off, and broke his leg. The neighbors called it a "terrible misfortune." The old man replied "maybe." The day after, the army came to the village to draft young men, but the son was spared thanks to his broken leg. The neighbors said the farmer was lucky how things turned out, and the old man answered "maybe. — Peter Morville

Who is the more righteous? The stoic farmer who dutifully tends his fields while the world burns? Or the man who brings merciless violence to the enemies of peace? Is the common criminal an equal villain to the agent who kills on behalf of a cause greater than himself? I've answered these questions and made peace with their consequences. As I mounted my horse alongside Vettias, my mentor in the dark arts, I would need to draw on the fortitude these answers provided more than ever. We — Christian Kachel