Chief Joseph Quotes

The voice of the natural world would be, "Could you please give us space and leave us alone to get along with our own lives and our own ways, because we actually know much better how to do it then when you start interfering."

If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers.

You can say, like, planet Earth has an existing geology, and what we do as human beings and as architects is that we try to sort of alter and modify and expand the geology.

A place is an area within an environment that has been altered in such a way to make the general environment more conspicuous.

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.

Our task is not to rediscover nature but to remake it.

Man is a complex animal; he makes deserts bloom and lakes die.

It's nice to think about having everything natural and similar to pre-Columbian times.... In fact, man himself has long been part of that environment and there is no way to separate him from that environment.

Our conservation laws are based on static ideas about nature—not landscapes that are rapidly changing because of something humans did.

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.

Agriculture changes the landscape more than anything else we do. It alters the composition of species. We don't realize it when we sit down to eat, but that is our most profound engagement with the rest of nature.

Wildness is not just the "preservation of the world," it is the world

Mountains are freedom. Treat them respectfully.

I don’t know how to save the world. I don’t have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth’s inhabitants, none of us will survive—nor will we deserve to.

Apart from the hostile influence of man, the organic and the inorganic world are ... bound together by such mutual relations and adaptations s secure, if not the absolute permanence and equilibrium of both ... at least a very slow and gradual succession of changes in those conditions. But man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords.

May this continent, the last explored by humankind, be the first one to be spared by humankind.

The gardener cultivates wildness, but he does so carefully and respectfully, in full recognition of its mystery.

One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better.

If human nature eventually is going to take the place of nature everywhere, those of us who have been naturalists will have to transpose the faith in nature which is inherent in the profession to a faith in man-if necessary, man alone in the world.

Jungles and grasslands are the logical destinations, and towns and farmland the labyrinths that people have imposed between them sometime in the past. I cherish the green enclaves accidentally left behind.

. . . 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.

Our relationship with nature has changed radically, irreversibly, but by no means all for the bad. Our new epoch is laced with invention. Our mistakes are legion, but our talent is immeasurable.

Ecology is often confused with environmentalism, while in fact, environmentalism often leaves out the fact that people, too, can be a legitimate part of an ecosystem.

There are a great many people who are in favor of conservation no matter what it means.