The exquisite sight, sound, and smell of wilderness is many times more powerful if it is earned through physical achievement, if it comes at the end of a long and fatiguing trip for which vigorous good health is necessary. Practically speaking, this means that no one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.

However, I think the major opposition to ecology has deeper roots than mere economics; ecology threatens widely held values so fundamental that they must be called religious.

A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.

Incommensurables cannot be compared.

The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.

The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.

Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.