John Muir Quotes

All of my work is based on nature. I grew up in a rural environment and living in the Bay Area allows for immediate access to wonderful natural environs. Basically nature is my Genus Loci, or the place where my spirit resides.

In our bones we need the natural curves of hills, the scent of chaparral, the whisper of pines, the possibility of wildness.

Flyers fell a certain kinship with the sight of the earth unencrusted by humanity, they want to see it that way in one sweeping view, in reassurance that nature still exists on her own, without a chain-link fence to hold her.

The German landscape is something unique that we cannot disturb and have no right to destroy. The more densely populated our 'living space' becomes with settlements, the greater our hunger will grow for unspoilt nature. The ever increasing spiritual damage caused by life within the big city will make this hunger practically uncontrollable... when we build here on this the landscape of our homeland we must be clear that we will protect its beauty; and in places where this beauty has already disappeared, we will reconstruct it.

I love New Zealand. It's my favorite place to shoot. It's one of my favorite countries to visit. The people, the food, the landscape, everything about it I love.

It is imperative to maintain portions of the wilderness untouched so that a tree will rot where it falls, a waterfall will pour its curve without generating electricity, a trumpeter swan may float on uncontaminated water - and moderns may at least see what their ancestors knew in their nerves and blood.

We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to go there. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.

My heart found its home long ago in the beauty, mystery, order and disorder of the flowering earth. I wanted future generations to be able to savor what I had all my life.

...recognize and respect Earth's beautiful systems of balance, between the presence of animals on land, the fish in the sea, birds in the air, mankind, water, air, and land. Most importantly there must always be awareness of the actions by people that can disturb this precious balance.

Nature is what we see - the hill, the afternoon, squirrel, eclipse, the bumblebee. Nay, nature is heaven. Nature is what we hear...

We see how capitalism is destroying Mother Earth. I remain convinced that the Earth can exist without man but man cannot live without the Earth.

You can drink out of Lincoln's nose. They got the Hard Rock t-shirts. They got Elvis, too.

wild flowers should be enjoyed unplucked where they grow.

It's very benign, it seems, to think, "There's a tree." In fact, it's a very beautiful thought. If someone chops down all the trees, then we think, "Oh, my goodness, something is out of order in my world." We begin to think, "Who am I in a world without trees?"

Nature, which alone is good, is wholly familiar and common.

But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life...as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures.

Industrial tourism is a threat to the national parks. But the chief victims of the system are the motorized tourists. They are being robbed and robbing themselves. So long as they are unwilling to crawl out of their cars they will not discover the treasures of the national parks and will never escape the stress and turmoil of the urban-suburban complexes which they had hoped, presumably, to leave behind for a while.

Conservatives are people who look at a tree and feel instinctively that it is more beautiful than anything they can name. But when it comes to defending that tree against a highway, they will go for the highway.

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it.

The good life of any river may depend on the perception of its music; and the preservation of some music to perceive.

Wilderness is rapidly becoming one of those aspects of the American dream which is more of the past than of the present. Wilderness is not only a condition of nature, but a state of mind and mood and heart. It cannot be confined to the museum-case status—seen only as a passing diorama from superlative throughways.

The sky and the earth and the waters and the things that are in them, the fishes, and the birds and the trees are not evil. All these are good; it is evil men who make this evil world.

In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock.

I would hate to have "Holiday in Cambodia" become as tiresome to other people as hearing "Like a Rock" in a Chevrolet commercial.