Stewart L. Udall Quotes

The real story of settlement was a story of work, not conquest.

The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth, and the native American shared this elemental ethic: the land was alive to his loving touch, and he, its son, was brother to all creatures.

Life is good in America, but the good life still eludes us. Our standard of living is admittedly high, but measured by those things that truly distinguish a civilization, our living standards are hardly high at all. We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.

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.

Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.

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

America today stands poised on a pinnacle of wealth and power, yet we live in a land of vanishing beauty, of increasing ugliness, of shrinking open space, and of an overall environment that is diminished daily by pollution and noise and blight.

It is obvious that the best qualities in man must atrophy in a standing-room-only environment.

Cherish sunsets, wild creatures, and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the Earth!

Over the long haul of life on this planet it is the ecologists — and not the bookkeepers of business — who are the ultimate accountants.

If you want inner peace find it in solitude, not speed, and if you would find yourself, look to the land from which you came and to which you go.

A land ethic for tomorrow should be as honest as Thoreau's Walden, and as comprehensive as the sensitive science of ecology. It should stress the oneness of our resources and the live-and-help-live logic of the great chain of life. If, in our haste to "progress," the economics of ecology are disregarded by citizens and policy makers alike, the result will be an ugly America.

Gross National Product is our Holy Grail; the economists and statisticians its keepers.

We who have chopped and mined and built and machined our way to wealth and power now grope out from our cities...for something we cannot forget. Beyond the noise and the asphalt and ugly architecture, we yearn for the long waves and beach grass; we see white wings on morning air, and in the afternoon, the shadows cast by the doorways of history.