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
I … am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more, to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!
—Helen Keller (1880–1968) American Author
Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains with their right aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her brought deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling waves in the magic of the summer clouds and glorious sunshine;—no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery
—Washington Irving (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
Each day comes to me with both hands full of possibilities, and in its brief course I discern all the verities and realities of my existence; the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the spirit of beauty.
—Helen Keller (1880–1968) American Author
Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
Plants are the young of the world. Vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect man, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not, within the scope of mind science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Since the land is the parent, let the citizens take care of her more carefully than children do their mother.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
The richest values of wilderness lie not in the days of Daniel Boone, nor even in the present, but rather in the future.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
Harmony with the land is like harmony with a friend. You cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say you cannot have game and hate predators. The land is one organism.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and intruded depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.
—John Hope Franklin (1915–2009) American Historiean, Civil Rights Activist
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
Finally, there are those whose chief purpose in visiting the forests is simply an escape from civilization. These people want to rest from the endless chain of mechanization and artificiality which bounds their lives. In the forest they temporarily abandon a routine to which they cannot become wholly reconciled, and return to that nature in which hundreds of generations of their ancestors were reared.
—Bob Marshall (1901–39) American Forester
I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
For I have learned
To look on the nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense of sublime
Of something far more deeply infused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the minds of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All living things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains, and of all that we behold
From this green earth, of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear—both what they half create,
And what they perceive, will be pleased to recognize
In nature and the Language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart and soul
Of all my moral being.
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet
Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
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
I care to live only to entice people to look at nature’s loveliness. My only special self is nothing (I want to be) like a flake of glass through which light passes.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
All good things are wild and free.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
For me and for thousands with similar inclinations, the most important passion of life is the overpowering desire to escape periodically from the clutches of a mechanistic civilization. To us the enjoyment of solitude, complete independence, and the beauty of undefined panoramas is absolutely essential to happiness.
—Bob Marshall (1901–39) American Forester
Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother, and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children?
—Black Elk (1863–1950) Native American Spiritual Leader
Wilderness, then, assumes unexpected importance as a laboratory for the study of land-health.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
The machine called Nature into an art form. For the first time at men began to regard Nature as a source of aesthetic and spiritual values.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose—some for cash and some for “political influence.” We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice. We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. “Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?”
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
The mountains are calling and I must go.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.
—Rachel Carson (1907–64) American Naturalist, Science Writer
How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has its glorious starry firmament for a roof. In such places, standing alone on the mountaintop, it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make—leaves and moss like the marmots and the birds, or tents or piled stone—we all dwell in a house of one room—the world with the firmament for its roof—are all sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
The earth’s vegetation is part of a web of life in which there are intimate and essential relations between plants and the earth, between plants and other plants, between plants and animals. Sometimes we have no choice but to disturb these relationships, but we should do so thoughtfully, with full awareness that what we do may have consequences remote in time and place.
—Rachel Carson (1907–64) American Naturalist, Science 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
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (1904–91) American Children’s Books Writer, Writer, Cartoonist, Animator
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I’ll never see a tree at all.
—Ogden Nash (1902–71) American Writer of Sophisticated Light Verse
Sequoias, kings of their race, growing close together like grass in a meadow, poised their brave domes and spires in the sky three hundred feet above the ferns and lilies that enameled the ground; towering serene through the long centuries, preaching God’s forestry fresh from heaven
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
Where there is no vision, the people perish.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
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
Humanity is cutting down its forests, apparently oblivious to the fact that we may not be able to live without them
—Isaac Asimov (1920–92) Russian-born American Writer, Scientist
In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world—the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
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
The wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit.
—Joseph Wood Krutch (1893–1970) American Writer, Critic, Naturalist
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
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 touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Many of our greatest American thinkers, men of the caliber of Thomas Jefferson, Henry Thoreau, Mark Twain, William James, and John Muir, have found the forest and effective stimulus to original thought.
—Bob Marshall (1901–39) American Forester
To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.
—Tacitus (56–117) Roman Orator, Historian
My heart is tuned to the quietness that the stillness of nature inspires.
—Pir Hazrat Vilayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi Mystic, Musician