Poetry, mythology, and religion represent the world as man would like to have it, while science represents the world as he gradually comes to discover it.

Few people have ever seriously wished to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by passions and touched with that ceremonial grace which is impossible without some affectionate loyalty to traditional form and ceremonies.

The wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit.

Happiness is a kind of gratitude and vice versa.

We must not judge the society of the future by considering whether or not we should like to live in it; the question is whether those who have grown up in it will be happier than those who have grown up in our society or those of the past.

If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.

Technology made large populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable.