Inspiring Quotes for Farmers: Wisdom from the Fields

"My grandfather used to say that once in your life you need a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, and a preacher. But every day, three times a day, you need a farmer."

- Brenda Schoepp

"Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness."

- Thomas Jefferson

"It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn."

- B. C. Forbes

"It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn."

- B. C. Forbes

"Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful and most noble employment of man."

- George Washington

"When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization."

- Daniel Webster

"I would rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world."

- George Washington

"Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals & happiness."

- Thomas Jefferson

"The farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn’t still be a farmer."

- Will Rogers

"When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization."

- Daniel Webster

"The farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn’t still be a farmer."

- Will Rogers

"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings."

- Masanobu Fukuoka

"There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace."

- Aldo Leopold

"We have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist."

- Wendell Berry

"I never wanted to become an actor. I always wanted to be a farmer and dreamt of owning half an acre of agriculture land."

- Pawan Kalyan

"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus."

- E. B. White

"Those too lazy to plow in the right season will have no food at the harvest."

- Proverbs 20:4

"Farming isn't something that can be taught. Each plant tells its own story that has to be read repeatedly."

- Kelsey Timmerman

"Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days."

- Henri Alain

"Strong communities are built around local, real food. Food we trust to nourish our bodies, the farmer and planet."

- Kimbal Musk

"I would certainly encourage young people to pursue their dreams. It isn't always an easy path, but it's worth going after. And I figure if a farmer's daughter from Iowa can become an astronaut, you can be just about anything you want to be."

- Peggy Whitson

"There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and the hope of a serene old age, that no other business or profession can promise."

- Robert Green Ingersoll

"My dream is to become a farmer. Just a Bohemian guy pulling up his own sweet potatoes for dinner."

- Lenny Kravitz

"A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus."

- E. B. White

"Soil is a living ecosystem, and is a farmer's most precious asset. A farmer's productive capacity is directly related to the health of his or her soil."

- Howard Warren Buffett

"I always wanted to be a farmer. There is a tradition of that in my family."

- Bjork

"I'm a farmer now, and it's fantastic. My goal is to be totally self-sufficient and grow everything that I eat. There's something about earning your dinner that's cool."

- Roseanne Barr

"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field."

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Farming is a profession of hope."

- Brett Brian

"Those too lazy to plow in the right season will have no food at the harvest."

- Proverbs 20:4

"In any food crisis, it is the top of the food chain that suffers the most. In the case of farmer's distress, the top of food chain is us - the end consumer."

- Prashant Bhushan

"No race can prosper until it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem."

- Booker T. Washington

"The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways."

- John F. Kennedy

"Even if a farmer intends to loaf, he gets up in time to get an early start."

- Edgar Watson Howe

"I come from the family of farmers. I am a son of a farmer."

- Pankaj Tripathi

"The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways."

- John F. Kennedy

"Agrarian reform should not merely subdivide misery, it must raise living standards. Ownership raises the farmer from his, but productivity will keep him on his feet."

- Gloria Macapagal Arroyo

"Worm or beetle - drought or tempest - on a farmer's land may fall, Each is loaded full o' ruin, but a mortgage beats 'em all."

- Will Carleton

"I believe in Jai Jawan Jai Kisan - a country where the farmer is unhappy is on its path towards destruction."

- Gurpreet Ghuggi

"My father was a tomato farmer. There is the phrase that says he or she worked their fingers to the bone, well, that's my dad. And he was a very good man."

- Sidney Poitier

"If the rain spoils our picnic, but saves a farmer's crop, who are we to say it shouldn't rain?"

- Tom Barrett

"Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest."

- Douglas Jerrold

"I would love it if my son becomes a farmer in today's day and age."

- Rupali Ganguly

"My father was a man who didn't consider himself learned. He was a man who liked to be a farmer. He enjoyed his dairy farm and felt the calling. So there was a dedication. I was dedicated as a child to the service of God, and so there was this continual centering of a greater purpose than your own."

- Phil Jackson

"Somewhere in Rwanda, a rural farmer is dreaming of providing an education for her children. Not just high school, but maybe even a university degree. Such a dream used to seem out of reach."

- Sylvia Mathews Burwell

"I've always said I want a farmer, not a hunter. Hunters go for the kill and they move on. A farmer nurtures; he watches things grow."

- Eva Longoria

"Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard! Heap high the golden corn! No richer gift has Autumn poured From out her lavish horn!"

- John Greenleaf Whittier

"There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age."

- Bill Bryson

"We've got this cultural mentality that you've got to be an idiot to be a farmer."

- Joel Salatin

"It may be assumed as a fixed truth that the prosperity and riches of the farmer must depend on the prosperity and good national regulation of trade."

- Oliver Ellsworth

"I wanted to be a farmer; actually, I wanted to be a horse-breeder. And I had the stallions... but then I heard Little Richard, and that was it."

- Lemmy

"If I wasn't going to be a surgeon, I wanted to be a farmer or grow oranges or something like that. I grow flowers now - orchids. That is something that I find very interesting."

- Magdi Yacoub

"My grandfather was a persuasive man who made friends with people at every level of influence. In order to fight against our tribe's termination, he went to newspapers and politicians and urged them to advocate for our tribe in Washington. He also supported his family through the Depression as a truck farmer."

- Louise Erdrich

"Frankly, any city person who doesn't think I deserve a white-collar salary as a farmer doesn't deserve my special food."

- Joel Salatin

"If we as a society are willing to have a preference for organic food, the farmer can pass on the savings."

- Robert Patterson

"The story of family farming underscores a legacy of sustainability."

- Amanda Zaluckyj

"As the Republican platforms says, the welfare of the farmer is vital to that of the whole country."

- William Howard Taft

"The master's eye is the best fertilizer."

- Pliny the Elder

"Land is an emotional subject with a farmer in India because it is his only means of income."

- Kushal Pal Singh

"I expected to be a farmer like my father and brothers. Life seemed pleasant and orderly."

- Lawrence Welk

"There is no employing class, no working class, no farming class. You may pigeonhole a man or woman as a farmer or a worker or a professional man or an employer or even a banker. But the son of the farmer will be a doctor or a worker or even a banker, and his daughter a teacher. The son of a worker will be an employer - or maybe president."

- Herbert Hoover

"Browsing our local farmer's market is one of my family's favorite weekend activities. Make it a relaxing, healthful habit for your family, and you'll reap the nutritional rewards."

- Suzanne Somers

"In the summer, I love to go up north to a cottage and relax by the lake, swim, go canoeing... I also love riding my bike around Toronto, going to the farmer's market, cooking. That sounds simple, but it's a luxury you don't have when you're living in hotels."

- Sarah Gadon

"The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer... form the great body of the people of the United States, they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws."

- Andrew Jackson

"I inherited that calm from my father, who was a farmer. You sow, you wait for good or bad weather, you harvest, but working is something you always need to do."

- Miguel Indurain

"The combat environment has the effect of flattening out civilian identities. If you're young or old, or a graduate from Harvard or the son of a farmer from Alabama, or if you're gay or straight or good-looking or ugly: none of those things matters much in combat, as long as you can conform to the group expectations."

- Sebastian Junger

"There is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song."

- Masanobu Fukuoka

"I briefly did therapy, but after a while, I realised it is just like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can't fix the weather - you just have to get on with it."

- Douglas Adams

"Mum is from West Waterford, Dungarvan. She's a farmer's daughter. She's a nurse. She left home very young - I think she was 18 - and went off to train as a nurse in England. My dad is from India, just south of Mumbai. He was one of the first in his family to go to college, and he went to England in the '70s; he emigrated there."

- Leo Varadkar

"If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors."

- Walter Scott

"'Redneck' has been terribly abused as a term. Where I come from, a redneck was a farmer who worked the fields all day and got his neck sunburned. People made fun of them."

- Lewis Grizzard

"I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment."

- Henry David Thoreau

"I can't decide if I'm a hippie or elegant older woman, a farmer's wife, a crazy person."

- Elizabeth Berg

"As the revenue of the farmer is realized in raw produce, or in the value of raw produce, he is interested, as well as the landlord, in its high exchangeable value, but a low price of produce may be compensated to him by a great additional quantity."

- David Ricardo

"If a farmer calls me to a sick animal, he couldn't care less if I were George Bernard Shaw."

- James Herriot

"To the factory farmer, in contrast to the traditional farmer with his sense of honor and obligation, the animals are 'production units,' and accorded all the sympathy that term suggests."

- Matthew Scully

"In 1976, Jimmy Carter - peanut farmer; carried his own suitcase, imagine that - somewhat tapped America's durable but shallow reservoir of populism. By 1980, ordinariness in high office had lost its allure."

- George Will

"Abraham, a simple farmer, at a word from the Invisible God, marched, with family and stock, through the terrible desert to a distant land to live among a people whose language he could neither speak nor understand! Not bad, that!"

- Charles Studd

"Today, somewhere in America, more foreclosures. More auctions. Another farmer plots his own death. And another. There is an art to making your death by combine look like an accident."

- Carolyn Chute

"Did Superman really want to save the world, or did he just feel like he had to? Would he much rather be a farmer? Maybe. Would he much rather be hanging out with his dad and his mom and his dog? Probably."

- Gerard Way

"I've got two brothers. One's older - the artist - and then my younger brother is an ecological economist - a farmer."

- Josh O'Connor

"The man who sows wrong thoughts and deeds and prays that God will bless him is in the position of a farmer who, having sown tares, asks God to bring forth for him a harvest of wheat."

- James Allen

"Well, you know, I had been a peanut farmer. I had - you know who was the first president - Democratic president I ever met? Bill Clinton."

- Jimmy Carter

"I am not a pig farmer. The pigs had a great time, but I didn't make any money."

- Willie Nelson

"But, in North Korea, it's just the opposite. There's one story. It's written by the Kim regime. And 23 million people are conscripted to be secondary characters. There, as a youth, your aptitude towards certain jobs is measured, and the rest of your life is dictated, whether you'll be a fisherman or a farmer or an opera singer."

- Adam Johnson

"Never answer a question from a farmer."

- Hubert H. Humphrey

"Everybody had to go to some college or other. A business college, a junior college, a state college, a secretarial college, an Ivy League college, a pig farmer's college. The book first, then the work."

- Sylvia Plath

"Bailing twine turns every farmer into MacGyver."

"A lot has been said and written about agriculture since the dawn of human civilization. Some good, some bad, and a lot that isn’t worth repeating. I’m probably guilty of the last one. But there are some farming quotes so good they stick out and are worth repeating."