I began a collection of farm quotes years ago, with credit given. Several are from some classic statements made here at New Ag Talk. I have highlighted in bold print my two personal favorites.

"Son don't ever complain about it being too wet. It can get dry enough to lose a crop everywhere, but it won't ever get wet enough to lose a crop everywhere."
- Dean Reed, Georgia Farmer

"Organizing farmers to make an impact on the market would be much like trying organize and herd house cats. It ain't going to happen"
- John Whitcraft, From New Ag Talk Post, 9/11/2008

"The only difference between Vegas and farming was the lights are brighter and the odds are posted when you walk in."
- Unknown

"I never could get the banker to loan me money for Vegas, I don't think I've got the guts for putting everything I put into a crop on a black 7. Maby I should get out of farming?"
- Posting at NewAg Talk by "Lightning, Inc.", on Aug 15, 2008

"Wheat is down a dollar a bushel, I should of sold last fall. Calves are up .50 a lb., I think I'll keep them all".
- Baxter Black

"Let's stop treating our soil like dirt."
- Sign on a geography professor's office door

"An old farmer and respected business man once said 'when you take out the risk, you take out the PROFIT!' I've always remembered that quote and it's very true when you really think about it."
- tiger6620, posting at New Ag Talk Market Talk 8/5/2008

"I don't know how much more prosperity I can stand."
- Ron Seagraves of Glasgow, KY, posting at New Ag Talk, July 26, 2008, referring to the inflation level of input items and the high commodity prices of the current times.

"You better call your Valley man to come fix your end gun, one of those tall pigweeds tore it off as it was coming around."
- Curt Jones, Georgia Farmer, July 8,. 2008 to Laney Wooten.

"A nuclear sub can leave port and stay gone forever running off its own power, but the one thing that will make it come back is when it runs out of food. Agriculture is very important to this country."
- Congressman Jack Kingston, March 27, 2008, while at a brief meeting with researchers, farmers, and other ag industry persons at the University of Georgia Campus in Tifton.

"5.00 corn is gonna break more farmers than 2.00 corn ever thought about."
- INDY, "Indianajones" from New Ag Talk web post, 3/15/2007

"Give a farmer a dime and he'll spend a dollar."
- Unknown, but user quoted from New Ag Talk web post, 3/15/2007

"If you want to help the economy and make money circulate, give it to a farmer."
- "Ashley", posting as "gafarmer" from Willacoochee, Georgia, New Ag Talk web post, 3/15/2007

"How do you get a farmer to spend $100????  Give him $50 and tell him it is going to rain."
- "Wheaties", quoted at New Ag Talk web post, 3/15/2007

"When food is abundant, there are many problems. When food is scarce, there is only one problem."
- Somebody's signature line

"Give a farmer high prices, and he'll give you a surplus"
- Various, unknown.

"We’ve paid for our dependence on foreign oil. Imagine if we had to depend on foreign countries for our food."
- KEVIN G. ROGERS, President, Arizona Farm Bureau Federation; prepared statement, MAY 1, 2006, COOLIDGE, AZ; REVIEW OF FEDERAL FARM POLICY HEARING

"While we believe that dependence on foreign oil has caused serious problems, depending on other countries to provide our most basic need— food—is absolutely hazardous to the American public."
- RICK FOX, PRESIDENT, SOUTH DAKOTA STOCKGROWERS ASSOCIATION; JULY 31, 2006; WALL, SD: REVIEW OF FEDERAL FARM POLICY HEARING

"I know of no pursuit in which more real and important services can be rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture, its breed of useful animals, and other branches of a husbandman’s cares."
- George Washington

"With reference to either the individual or national welfare, agriculture is of primary importance."
- George Washington

"I've always thought and said that farmers are the smartest people in the world.  They don't go for high hats, and they can spot a phoney a mile off."
- Harry S. Truman.

"The most peaceful thing in the world is plowing a field.  Chances are you'll do your best thinking that way."
- Harry S. Truman

"Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic, but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streest of every city in the country."
- William Jennings Bryan

"Soil is ultmately a cultural problem, and it will only be corrected by cultural solutions."
- Wendell Berry

"When tillage begins, the other arts follow.  Farmers are therefore the founders of human civilizations."
- Daniel Webster

"Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is most important labor of man."
- Daniel Webster

"I view the farmer who wants to leave the land in better shape when he leaves it to the next generation as the role model for the civilization."
- Charles Walters, Jr.

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

"It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon.  Which raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody not to."
- Franklin P. Jones

"Whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his c ountry, than a whole race of politicians put together."
- King of Brobdingnog, Gulliver's Travels

"There are three ways a man can be ruined: women, gambling, and farming. My father chose the most boring."
- Pope John XXIII.    1881-1963

"As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail."
- Henry David Thoreau.    1817-1862

"I believe that the great Creator has put ores and oil on this earth to give us a breathing spell. As we exhaust them, we must be prepared to fall back on our farms, which is God’s true storehouse and can never be exhausted. We can learn to synthesize material for every human need from things that grow."
- George Washington Carver

"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet renounce controversy are people who want crops without ploughing the ground."
- Frederick Douglass 1817-1895

"Farmers are the only indispensable people on the face of the earth."
- Ambassador Li Zhaoxing, PRC, Idaho Grain, Fall 2000

"It's time to speak up for the farmers!  Throughout most of my life, I raised tobacco.  I've hoed it; I've suckered it; I've sprayed it I've cut and spliced it, put it in the barn, stripped and sold it."
- Al Gore during his 1988 Presidential Campaign

"It's fixin' to be over.  Right now, Mother Nature's driving, I'm just along for the ride. I feel like the rat who was after the cheese in the trap.  I'm caught in the trap and can't get out, and could care less whether I get any cheese or not."
- Henry Mims, 5/29/07, Georgia farmer

"What is the difference between a good farmer & a bad farmer? About 2 weeks!"
- "TasCowboy" from farmphoto.com

"Most years there seems to be one day I should have left the planter in the shed. I just can't figure out ahead of time what day that is."
- Dan Dunbar, of west central Indiana, 6/7/07, from a New Ag Talk Post,

"Then God said, let the earth bring forth vegetation, every kind of plant that bears seed...God saw how good it was.  See, I give you every seed bearing plant all over the earth...to be your food."
- Genesis 1:11

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations . . . or as the Native American proverb states . . .‘We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.’ or as our grandfathers used to say…‘Don’t eat the seed corn.’”  (Brundtland 1987)

"Speaking of watering out of a pond, I've noticed that just because you pump water twice doesn't mean it's twice as wet."
- Adrian, south Georgia farmer on New Ag Talk, June, 2008, on irrigating from a holding pond that is fed by groundwater.

"Technology is strange: Engineers try to make video games more like reality and they try to make farming more like a video game."
-  Farmin' Fireman  (From New Ag Talk post, spring 2009)