Romanticism was more than merely an alternative to a sterile classicism; romanticism made possible, especially in art, a great expansion of the human consciousness.

Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.

Humility is a virtue when you have no other.

In social affairs, I'm an optimist. I really do believe that our military- industrial civilization will soon collapse.

We need wilderness because we are wild animals. Everyone needs a place where he can go to go crazy in peace. For the terror, freedom, and delirium. Because we need brutality and raw adventure, because men and women first learned to love in, under, and all around trees, because we need for every pair of feet and legs about ten leagues of naked nature, crags to leap from, mountains to measure by, deserts to finally die in when the heart fails.

I want my body to help fertilize the growth of a cactus or cliff rose or sagebrush or tree.

Is there a God? Who knows? Is there an angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon?