I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. But I tend to resist or evade any kind of authority based merely on the power to coerce. Government, for example. The Army tried to train us to salute the uniform, not the man. Failed. I will salute the man, maybe, if I think he's worthy of it, but I don't salute uniforms anymore.

I love America because it is a confused, chaotic mess - and I hope we can keep it this way for at least another thousand years. The permissive society is the free society.

Let us praise the noble turkey vulture: No one envies him; he harms nobody; and he contemplates our little world from a most serene and noble height.

Among politicians and businessmen, *Pragmatism* is the current term for 'To hell with our children.'

A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.

The absurd vanity of metaphysicians who like to imagine that they create the world by thinking about it.

All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.