The National Park Service today exemplifies one of the highest traditions of public service.

I like the story about Henry David Thoreau, who, when he was on his death bed, his family sent for a minister. The minister said, 'Henry, have you made your peace with God?' Thoreau said, 'I didn't know we'd quarreled.

Here in the United States we're now consuming about three gallons of petroleum per person per day. That's twenty pounds of oil per person per day. We only consume about four pounds of oxygen per person per day. We're consuming five times more oil each day, here in the United States than we are oxygen. We've become the oil tribe.

The real story of the settlement of the West was work, not conquest

Where nature is concerned, familiarity breeds love and knowledge, not contempt.

Each generation has its own rendezvous with the land, for despite our fee titles and claims of ownership, we are all brief tenants on this planet. By choice, or by default, we will carve out a land legacy for our heirs.

A land ethic for tomorrow should...stress the oneness of our resources and the live-and-help-live logic of the great chain of life.