Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.
—Jimmy Carter (b.1924) American Head of State, Military Leader
With the beauty before me,
May I walk
With beauty behind me,
May I walk
With beauty above me,
May I walk
With beauty below me,
May I walk
With beauty all around me,
May I walk
Wandering on a trail of beauty,
Lively, I walk.
—American Indian Proverb
Laws change; people die; the land remains.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
I am in love with this world. I have nestled lovingly in it. I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings
—John Burroughs (1837–1921) American Naturalist, Writer
If we were required to know the position of the fruit dots or the character of the indusium’s, nothing could be easier to ascertain, but if it is required that you be affected by ferns, that they amount to anything, signify anything to you, that they be another sacred scripture and revelation to you, help to redeem your life, this end is not so easily accomplished.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
We who are gathered here may represent a particular delete, not of money and power, but of concern for the earth for the earth’s sake.
—Ansel Adams (1902–84) American Photographer
Believe one who knows; you will find something greater in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.
—Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French Catholic Religious Leader
One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Explorer
The time is almost upon us when a pack-train must wind its way up a graveled highway and turn its bellmare in the pasture of a summer hotel. When that day comes, the pack-train will be dead, the diamond hitch will be merely rope, and Kit Carson and Jim Bridger will be names in a history lesson. And thenceforth the march of empire will be a matter of gasoline and four wheel brakes.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
There’s a land where the mountains are nameless, And the rivers all run God knows where; There are lives that are erring and aimless, And deaths that just hang by a hair; There are hardships that nobody reckons; There’s a land – oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back – and I will.
—Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Scottish Poet, Author
In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.
—Charles Lindbergh (1902–74) American Aviator, Inventor, Conservationist
No site in the forest is without significance, not a glade, not a thicket that does not provide analogies to the labyrinth of human thoughts. Who among those people with a cultivated spirit, or whose heart has been wounded, can walk in a forest without the forest speaking to him? … If one searched for the causes of that sensation, at once solemn, simple, gentle, mysterious, that seizes one, perhaps it would be found in the sublime and ingenious spectacle of all the creatures obeying their destinies, immutably docile.
—Honore de Balzac (1799–1850) French Novelist
Natural species are the library from which genetic engineers can work.
—Thomas Lovejoy (1941–2021) American Conservation Biologist
Here is calm so deep, grasses cease waiting… wonderful how completely everything in wild nature fits into us, as if truly part and parent of us. The sun shines not on us, but in us. The rivers flow not passed, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
Forestry is the preservation of forests by wise use.
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Explorer
Forests are the “lungs” of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) American Head of State, Lawyer
Without enough wilderness America will change. Democracy, with its myriad personalities and increasing sophistication, must be fibred and vitalized by the regular contact with outdoor growths—animals, trees, sun warmth, and free skies—or it will dwindle and pale.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
Over and over announcing your place
In the family of things.
—Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American Poet
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe… The whole wilderness is unity and interrelationship is alive and familiar.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
Not to have known—as most men have not—either the mountain or the desert is not to have known one’s self.
—Joseph Wood Krutch (1893–1970) American Writer, Critic, Naturalist
Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men’s farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds have no title.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
A land ethic for tomorrow should be as honest as Thoreau’s Walden, and as comprehensive as the sensitive science of ecology. It should stress the oneness of our resources and the live-and-help-live logic of the great chain of life. If, in our haste to “progress,” the economics of ecology are disregarded by citizens and policy makers alike, the results will be an ugly America.
—Stewart Udall (1920–2010) American Politician, Government Official, Author
Wilderness is a necessity … They will see what I meant in time. There must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls. Food and drink is not all. There is the spiritual. In some it is only a germ, of course, but the germ will grow.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thought and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
Plants are created for the sake of animals, and animals for the sake of men; the tame for our use and provision; the wild, at least for the greater part, for our provision also, or for some other advantageous purpose, as furnishing us with clothes, and the like.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Come forth into the light of things. Let Nature be your teacher.
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet
All things are symbols: the external shows of Nature have their image in the mind
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
The land is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent, it is transcendent in its meaning, and it has the power to elevate a consideration of human life.
—Barry Lopez (1945–2020) American Essayist, Fiction Writer
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist