Gifford Pinchot Quotes

The purpose of conservation: The greatest good to the greatest number of people for the longest time.

Without natural resources life itself is impossible. From birth to death, natural resources, transformed for human use, feed, clothe, shelter, and transport us. Upon them we depend for every material necessity, comfort, convenience, and protection in our lives. Without abundant resources prosperity is out of reach.

Unless we practice conservation, those who come after us will have to pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure for the progress and prosperity of our day

Conservation is the application of common sense to the common problems for the common good.

Conservation means the wise use of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men

It is a greater thing to be a good citizen than to be a good Republican or a good Democrat.

The object of our forest policy is not to preserve the forests because they are beautiful-or because they are refuges for the wild creatures of the wilderness-but the making of prosperous homes-every other consideration becomes secondary.

The vast possibilities of our great future will become realities only if we make ourselves responsible for those realities.

Where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question shall always be answered from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.

A vision is not a vision unless it says yes to some ideas and no to others, inspires people and is a reason to get out of bed in the morning and come to work.

Learning is the gradual replacement of fantasy with fact.

If you aren't getting flak, you aren't over the target.

The goal of coaching is not in fixing what is broken, but in discovering new talents and new ways to use old talents that lead to far greater effectiveness.

The lumbermen...regarded forest devastation as normal and second growth as a delusion of fools....And as for sustained yield, no such idea had ever entered their heads. The few friends the forest had were spoken of, when they were spoken of at all, as impractical theorists, fanatics, or "denudatics," more or less touched in the head. What talk there was about forest protection was no more to the average American that the buzzing of a mosquito, and just about as irritating.

World-wide practice of Conservation and the fair and continued access by all nations to the resources they need are the two indispensable foundations of continuous plenty and of permanent peace

I had no more conception of what it meant to be a forester than the man in the moon....But at least a forester worked in the woods and with the woods - and I loved the woods and everything about them....My Father's suggestion settled the question in favor of forestry.

The American Colossus was fiercely intent on appropriating and exploiting the riches of all continents - grasping with both hands, reaping where he had not sown, wasting what he thought would last forever. New railroads were opening new territory. The exploiters were pushing farther and farther into the wilderness. The man who could get his hands on the biggest slice of natural resources was the best citizen. Wealth and virtue were supposed to trot in double harness.

By exposing yourself to risk, you're exposing yourself to heavy-duty learning, which gets you on all levels. It becomes a very emotional experience as well as an intellectual experience. Each time you make a mistake, you're learning from the school of hard knocks, which is the best education available.

I have been governor every now and then, but I am a forester all the time.

Innovation never happens as planned.

I ran into the gigantic and gigantically wasteful lumbering of great Sequoias, many of whose trunks were so huge they had to be blown apart before they could be handled. I resented then, and I still resent, the practice of making vine stakes hardly bigger than walking sticks out of these greatest of living things.

The outgrowth of conservation, the inevitable result, is national efficiency

In the old world that is passing, in the new world that is coming, national efficiency has been and will be a controlling factor in national safety and welfare

Innovations never happen as planned.