Stewart Udall Quotes

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

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.

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

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.

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 over-all environment that is diminished daily by pollution and noise and blight.

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.

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.

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. We cannot afford an America where expedience tramples upon esthetics and development decisions are made with an eye only on the present.

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

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

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.

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

It induced us to conduct government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality.

Admittedly, we must move ahead with the development of our land resources. Likewise, our technology must be refined. But in the long run life will succeed only in a life-giving environment, and we can no longer afford unnecessary sacrifices of living space and natural landscape to 'progress.'

So many people of my generation who served in the government were prisoners of the Cold War culture, still are.

Wilderness, like the national park system, was an American idea.

The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth.

Mining is like a search-and-destroy mission.

The national parklands have a major role in providing superlative opportunities for outdoor recreation, but they have other people serving values. They can provide an experience in conservation education for the young people of the country; they can enrich our literary and artistic consciousness; they can help create social values; contribute to our civic consciousness; remind us of our debt to the land of our fathers.

Washington's a cesspool of money.

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.

The auto industry must acknowledge that a rational transportation policy should seek a balance between individual convenience, the efficient use of limited resources, and urban-living values that protect spaciousness, natural beauty, and human-scale mobility.

For those who want to understand the issues of the environmental crisis, Encounters with the Archdruid is a superb book. McPhee reveals more nuances of the value revolution that dominates the new age of ecology than most writers could pack into a volume twice as long. I marvel at his capacity to listen intently and extract the essence of a man and his philosophy in the fewest possible words.

It gives me satisfaction to help people.

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