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.

That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.

To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

High horns, low horns, silence, and finally a pandemonium of trumpets, rattles, croaks, and cries that almost shakes the bog with its nearness ... A new day has begun on the crane marsh. A sense of time lies thick and heavy on such a place ... Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.

At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant.

Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow... the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible.

A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of his land.