The worthiness of any cause is not measured by its clean record, but by its readiness to see the blots when they are pointed out, and to change its mind.

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

I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.

The sweetest hunts are stolen. To steal a hunt, either go far into the wilderness where no one has been, or else find some undiscovered place under everybody's nose

Keeping records enhances the pleasure of the search and the chance of finding order and meaning in these events.

Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important.

The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations