Our history doesn't look at our own violence, the violence in our own past, and we go out and repeat it someplace else.

Once you figure out something about the watershed, you'll find out where the schools are going to hell, and the kids aren't learning, and there is no money. Social issues, class issues, and environmental issues were all connected.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

As I started reading about it, I saw that at the beginning of the 19th century, outside of New England - which was an unusually literate place - practically no one could read or write. And even in New England, the overall rate was only about 60 percent. That still means four out of 10 people couldn't put their name to a will.

The birds are silent in the woods. / Just wait: soon enough / You will be quiet too

There are instances: [Henry David] Thoreau read [John] Wordsworth, [John] Muir read Thoreau, Teddy Roosevelt read Muir, and you got national parks. It took a century for this to happen, for artistic values to percolate down to where honoring the relation of people's imagination to the land, or beauty, or to wild things, was issued in legislation.

If you ask me if I have this or that principle, tell me what its consequences are, and then I'll tell you whether I have that principle or not.