The most important characteristic of an organism is that capacity for internal self-renewal known as health. There are two organisms whose processes of self-renewal have been subjected to human interference and control. One of these is man himself (medicine and public health). The other is land (agriculture and coservation). The effort to control the health of land has not been very successful.

If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left worth fighting for.

The richest values of wilderness lie not in the days of Daniel Boone, nor even in the present, but rather in the future.

The practice of conservation must spring from a conviction of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right only when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the community, and the community includes the soil, waters, fauna, and flora, as well as people.

Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays.

Conservation is a positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely a negative exercise of abstinence and caution.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.