In the first place you can't see anything from a car; you've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you'll begin to see something, maybe. Probably not.

We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.

Baseball serves as a good model for democracy in action: Every player is equally important and each has a chance to be a hero.

Jane Austen: Getting into her books is like getting in bed with a cadaver. Something vital is lacking; namely, life.

In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that's on it is a mental construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms. It is an indoor philosophy.

There has never yet been a human society worthy of the name of civilization. Civilization remains a remote ideal.

it will be objected that a constantly increasing population makes resistance and conservation a hopeless battle. this is true. unless a way is found to stabilize the nation's population, the parks can not be saved. or anything else worth a damn. wilderness preservation, like a hundred other good causes, will be forgotten under the overwhelming pressure of a struggle for mere survival and sanity in a completely urbanized, completely industrialized, ever more crowded environment. for my own part i would rather take my chances in a thermonuclear war than live in such a world.