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
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World.
This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
If a certain assemblage of trees, of mountains, of waters, and of houses that we call a landscape is beautiful, it is not because of itself, but through me, through my own indulgence, through the thought or the sentiment that I attach to it
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in part, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. The quality of cranes lies, I think, in this higher gamut, as yet beyond the reach of words.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
The land, the earth God gave to man for his home…should never be the possession of any man, corporation, (or) society…any more than the air or water.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown; for going out, I found, was really going in.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
Wilderness, then, assumes unexpected importance as a laboratory for the study of land-health.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
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
Across the gulfs and barriers that now divide us, we must remember that there are no permanent enemies. Hostility today is a fact, but it is not a ruling law. The supreme reality of our time is our indivisibility as children of God and our common vulnerability on this planet.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
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
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
Returned me, oh sun,
to my wild destiny,
rain of the ancient wood,
bringing me back to the aroma of swords
that fall from the sky,
the solitary peace of pasture and rock,
the damp at the river-margins,
the smell of the larch tree,
the wind alive like a heart
beating in the crowded restlessness
of the towering araucaria.
Earth, give me back your pure gifts,
the towers of silence which rose
from the solemnity of their roots.
I want to go back to being what I have not been,
and learn to go back from such deeps
that amongst all natural things
I could live or not live; it does not matter
to be one stone more, the dark stone,
the pure stone which the river bears away.
—Pablo Neruda (1904–73) Chilean Poet, Diplomat, Political leader
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
Man is whole when he is in tune with the winds, the stars, and the hills… Being in tune with the universe is the entire secrets.
—William O. Douglas (1898–1980) American Judge
In wilderness is the preservation of the world.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
There’s no music like a little river’s … It takes the mind out of doors … and… sir, it quiets a man down like saying his prayers.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
Man always kills the things he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?
—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
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
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
Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awakened people’s curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good flammable stuff, it will catch fire.
—Anatole France (1844–1924) French Novelist
I think I could turn and live with the animals. They are so placid and self-contained. They do not sweat and whine about their condition. Not one is dissatisfied. Not one is demented with the mania of owning things. Not one is disrespectful or unhappy over the world.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
Come forth into the light of things. Let Nature be your teacher.
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet
The Arctic has a call that is compelling. The distant mountains [of the Brooks Range in Alaska] make one want to go on and on over the next ridge and over the one beyond. The call is that of a wilderness known only to a few…This last American wilderness must remain sacrosanct.
—William O. Douglas (1898–1980) American Judge
The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best He ever planted.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken. But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless. Even in the wilderness – especially in the wilderness – you shall love him.
—Frederick Buechner (1926–2022) American Writer, Theologian
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
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
Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals. Food chains are the living channels which conduct energy upward; death and decay return it to the soil. The circuit is not closed; some energy is dissipated in decay, some is added by absorption from the air, some is stored in soils, peats, and long-lived forests; but it is a sustained circuit, like a slowly augmented revolving fund of life.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
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