Helen H. Gardener Quotes

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

In all known time there has never been a greater monster or miracle than the human being.

Man, in the collective sense, is the hero of science. Man, in the collective sense, is the hero of Earth.

Human civilization is not something achieved against nature; it is rather the outcome of the working of the innate qualities of man.

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

The human race has improved everything, but the human race.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Man has now become an adjunct to perfect and carry forward these conquests.

Man has made many machines, complex and cunning, but which of them indeed rivals the workings of his heart?

The perpetual tendency of the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of the general laws of animated nature, which we can have no reason to expect to change.

It is labour, then, which puts the greatest part of value upon land, without which it would scarcely be worth anything

We must be cognizant of the fact that the absence of economic rationality and perpetual political instability in our societies prevent us from fully benefiting from our resources as well as capabilities. In the extreme case, we find ourselves in devastating wars. Our conflict-ridden geography has substantially undercut our ability to develop economically. Natural wealth, including oil revenues has been wasted and the focus of attention has been other than human development

It is with nations as with nature which knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.

Civilization develops man, and if he is, according to his whole character and destiny, made for development, civilization is his truly natural state …

Progress toward a more abundant material life does not come like manna from heaven, however. My message certainly is not one of complacency. The ultimate resource is people — especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty — who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit and inevitably benefit the rest of us as well.

Person after person has said to me in these last few days that this new world we face terrifies them. I can understand how that feeling would arise unless one believes that men are capable of greatness beyond their past achievements.... The time now calls for mankind as a whole to rise to great heights. We must have faith or we die.

Therein lies the greatness of man. Fear is never allowed to dominate that desire for greater knowledge and as long as mankind retains that spirit we will move forward.

… economic systems ... have never arranged themselves by themselves. It is men who do the ordering according to their attitudes, desires and understanding of things. Changes take place, not independent of man's will, but on account of man's wills. Civilization has progressed by man's interference with material conditions.

The secret to economic growth lay in the fact that that each generation attacked Nature not only with its own energies and resources, but with the heritage of equipment accumulated by its forebears.

Go ask Virginia— go ask even noble Maryland ... to show you her people, canals, railroads, universities, schools, charities, commerce cities, and cultivated areas.

Man is such an amazing animal, and the possibilities are infinite for each person.

We have barely begun to tap into the genius of our humanity.

Ultimately we've only got humanity to work with. It's only clay we've got.

The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress.

Mankind is still embryonic ... [man is] the bud from which something more complicated and more centered than man himself should emerge.