Douglas Dunn Quotes

Teddy Roosevelt of course was a great outdoorsman all his life.

The scenic ideals that surround even our national parks are carriers of a nostalgia for heavenly bliss and eternal calmness.

Every spring, this country will be reminded of the Lady from Texas. As trees bloom and flowers carpet our nation's capital, Lady Bird Johnson will be remembered. Only Lady Bird Johnson could, with her vision of a beautiful America, lay claim to spring as her memorial.

At present … the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only,—when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.

I have seen two tremendous works of nature in America—the Niagara Falls and Mr. [Theodore] Roosevelt.

John Muir, Earth-planet, Universe.

I have never considered myself anything other than an environmentalist. I have spent the better part of my life either in the wilderness, or trying desperately to get there.

In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.

Ecosystems are holy. The word "environmental" is a deadly compromise itself. It's a policy word that lives only in the head, and barely there.

Everyone says I should write a natural history or landscape book because if I have an area of amateur expertise, it is in those things.

What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet, Long live the weeds and the wildness yet.

Teddy Roosevelt is still a hero among environmentalists for his conservationist policies.

They are against nature and the principles of liberty

Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Kill nothing but time.

For him nature is basically a golf course or a ranch--or a national park turned into a country club where folks can burn off stress by speeding over the snow while polluting the air of Yellowstone with gas-guzzling skidoos.

I would be quite willing personally to leave the whole country as a wilderness for the next half-century, but I fear that if Englishmen do not go there, Yankees will.

Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy.

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.

Love em or leave em; just don’t destroy em.

Nature is nobody's ally.

If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant to look like.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

It's all very brilliant to build bridges and buildings, but long after we're gone, it will be the natural things in this world which will still be here.

The making of the far-famed New York Central Park was opposed by even good men, with misguided pluck, perseverance, and ingenuity, but straight right won its way, and now that park is appreciated. So we confidently believe it will be with our great national parks and forest reservations.