Michael Heizer Quotes

Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.

I think the best research is people you meet and things that they say, rather than second hand accounts of something. I think when you meet someone and talk to them, then you get the real thing and that's what you can use. That's the material you can actually put on the page.

In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed of perfection.

It is precisely because there is nothing within the One that all things are from it.

We do not make beams from the hollow, decaying trunk of the fallen oak. We use the upsoaring tree in the full vigor of its sap.

The earth is the general and equal possession of all humanity and therefore cannot be the property of individuals.

The goods of the earth are meant for everyone.

The product supply chain, from source material to store, is an organizing map for delivering human rights.

We have the greatest people on Earth, but they're depleted.

Americans live with the certain knowledge that the source of their greatness has not yet been released.

Man is entitled by birthright to a share of the earth's produce sufficient to fill the needs of his existence.

Just because we can't sell shares in nature doesn't mean it has no value.

I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred 'great books' - and one brave deed is worth a thousand.

Earth, thou great footstool of our God, who reigns on high; thou fruitful source of all our raiment, life, and food; our house, our parent, and our nurse.

The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth - soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife.

[The natural world cleans water, pollinates plants and provides pharmaceuticals, among many other gifts.] Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to humanity, every year.

All creation is a mine, and every man a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself ... are the infinitely various "leads" from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny.

There is oil in the Middle East there is rare earth in China.

I always feel at home where the sugar maple grows.... glorious in autumn, a fountain of coolness in summer, sugar in its veins, gold in its foliage, warmth in its fibers, and health in it the year round.

Government protection should be thrown around every wild grove and forest on the mountains, as it is around every private orchard, and the trees in public parks. To say nothing of their value as fountains of timber, they are worth infinitely more than all the gardens and parks of towns.

The trees are our lungs, the rivers our circulation, the air our breath, and the earth our body.

Malthus has been buried many times, and Malthusian scarcity with him. But as Garrett Hardin remarked, anyone who has to be reburied so often cannot be entirely dead.

Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problems.

Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

There’s nothing under the ground that’s worth more than the little layer of topsoil sitting on top of it.