Stewart Udall Quotes

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

Land is not something you inherit from your parents. It is something you borrow from your children.

It is often said that the earth belongs to the race, as if raw land was a boon, or gift.

Land is everything.

We owe at least this much to future generations, from whom we have borrowed a fragile planet called Earth.

Humans merely share the earth. We can only protect the land, not own it.

What we are doing is, rather than living on the interest of our basic biological capital, we're using up our capital, so we're dipping into our capital. We're using up what should be our children's and grandchildren's legacy.

I'm going to go out and get everybody together and say I think we ought to protect this for generations to come. Now, let's get down to work and walk the land and talk about the conflicts and get everybody involved.

I haven't inherited the earth from my parents, I am borrowing it from my children.

Each generation takes the earth as trustees. We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.

One of the things I would love for people to think about is social responsibility. If you are fortunate enough to be someone who owns land, I think you ought to be making the most efficient use of that land possible.

No man should have proprietary rights over land who does not use that land wisely and lovingly.

I maintain that if there is such a thing as a true and honest environmentalist, it's people like Slim and hopefully me, who have been caretakers of the land all our lives, along with the generations before us.

When I was operating as one of President Reagan's economic advisers, an early assignment was to analyze the federal government's landholdings and make recommendations about what to do with them. This was a big job. These lands are vast, covering an area six times that of France.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect

The earth belongs in usufruct to the living.

Land is not merely soil.

The need to incorporate longer term time scales into our societal choices is very real—and right in the lap of our generation.

I care about this beautiful planet that we all share. This is a home that we have to leave in good shape for the next generations.

Each generation is trusted with protecting our open spaces and natural resources to pass them on to future Americans to enjoy.

We are here, on earth. Not one of us has any right to the earth.

A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.

I'm just becoming more and more aware of this truly profound responsibility that we carry as individuals. And it's a responsibility not only to ourselves and to our families, but to the billions of people who still have to come in the future who will be dealing with our legacy.

Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for 'Tis the only thing in this world that lasts, 'Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for - worth dying for.

Right now, we don't have a very good relation with creation.