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

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.

The god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs from moping over their situation must also have created fundamentalists to keep rationalists from getting flabby. Let us be duly thankful for out blessings.

Every measured thing is part of a web of variables more richly interconnected than we know.

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.

Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.

The only thing we can really count on in this uncertain world is human unreliability itself.