Tom McCall Quotes

People don't want to go to the dump and have a picnic, they want to go out to a beautiful place and enjoy their day. And so I think our job is to try to take the environment, take what the good Lord has given us, and expand upon it or enhance it, without destroying it.

In the hierarchy of public lands, national parks by law have been above the rest: America's most special places, where natural beauty and all its attendant pleasures - quiet waters, the scents of fir and balsam, the hoot of an owl, and the dark of a night sky unsullied by city lights - are sacrosanct.

It's very important that we keep these special, wild places. It defines the United States. Imagine our country without our national parks and our monuments. Here in California, imagine if you didn't have in Southern Cal the Channel Islands or the great Highway 1, Big Sur up to Point Reyes up to the Redwood country.

We thought it was a very good idea in this day and age of threat to biodiversity….we believe the scope for ecotourism is great.

There is nothing so American as our national parks …. They are not just for rich people.

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.

One of the great tragedies is that there is so much less open land available in Japan today. Many Japanese come to New Zealand because of its beauty.

The devastating scale and frequency of my disappointment was proof of how much I still expected and wanted from the world, of what high hopes I still had for it.

Is there any nation on earth that has more natural attractions, from the scenic coastal towns of Maine to the volcanic islands of Hawaii and the natural beauty of our majestic national parks?

There's nothing greener than Washington state. They have the most beautiful vegetation on the planet. And the water is so clean.

I think we get used to not seeing the green things around us. I think they become the backdrop of our lives. And I think you actively have to ask somebody to request that they put that in the foreground.

We use our land for hunting, fishing, hiking, and to create jobs. Our outdoor economy is a billion dollar economic engine for the state that creates jobs.

A love of nature keeps no factories busy.

We only have this one planet; we got to figure out how to live on it without destroying it.

I was kind of hoping it was Anna Kournikova.

Babies are unreasonable; they expect far too much of existence. Each new generation that comes takes one look at the world, thinks wildly, "Is this all they've done to it?" and bursts into tears.

There is no better moment than this moment, when we're anticipating the actual moment itself. All of the moments that lead up to the actual moment are truly the best moments. Those are the moments that are filled with good times. Those are the moments in which you are able to think that it is going to be perfect, when the moment actually happens. But, the moment is reality, and reality always kinda sucks!

I don't need to make money destroying my environment. Why don't I just love it and figure out a way to be more sustainable?

The longer an event is anticipated-a milestone birthday, an eclipse, a new millennium-the more likely it is to be an anti-climax.

There's plenty of great stuff out there. I think it's just what we do is we all spend our allowance on the thing that we're told is going to be the big event, and sometimes the big event is disappointing.

I went to a Catholic high school, which, to this day, I could burn down. And I got great revenge because they had their fiftieth anniversary, andThe Baltimore Sun called me and said, ‘What did you think of your high school?’ And I said, ‘They discouraged every interest I ever had.’ And I saw that in print.

. . . perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a wild river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in singing waters . . . glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.

Every night when I go to bed I think, In the morning I will wake up in my own house and things will be back the way they were. It hasn’t happened this morning, either.

I still think we are smart enough to not destroy planet Earth, our only home.

The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?