"Should we publish a magazine at all? Since the increased numbers of backpackers are now threatening the backcountry from overuse, how then could we justify publishing a magazine which would probably encourage more backpacking? … It has not yet ben satisfactorily proved that when people do take up backpacking they ergo become more respectful of the environment." — The Editor Backpacker Magazine, Issue 1, 1973
"In many parts of experimental science unexpected discoveries are made in a workshop. The book of nature, whose pages are open to all, is read but by a few." — James D. Forbes Travels Through the Alps
"So we are left with a stark choice: allow climate disruption to change everything about our world, or change pretty much everything about our economy to avoid that fate." — Naomi Klein This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
"Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war." — Naomi Klein This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
"[Power, not just energy.] It seems to me that our problem has a lot less to do with the mechanics of solar power than the politics of human power." — Naomi Klein This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
"Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints, kill nothing but time." — Unknown
"The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders." — Edward Abbey
"There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction." — John F. Kennedy
"We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." — Albert Einstein
"For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it." — Jacques-Yves Cousteau
"How sad to think that nature speaks and mankind doesn’t listen." — Victor Hugo
"What we see often has more to do with what we have seen in the past or what we hope or expect to see than it does with what is staring us in the face." — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself." — Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
"A world without open country would be universal jail." — Edward Abbey
"'There is no such thing as sustainability. The best we can do is cause the least amount of harm.' Instead of 'sustainable,' he prefers the term 'responsible,' which, he argues, starts with companies treating nature not as a resource to be exploited but as a unique, life-giving entity on which we all—not least business—depend." — Yvon Chouinard The Guardian, "Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard: Denying Climate Change is Evil"
"A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children." — John James Audubon
"We all have a place, a city park, a mountain trail, a desert flower, a perfect beach break. Some place that brings us outside. Outside our work, outside our lives, outside ourselves. We might share them with others, but they feel like they are just for us. Most often, they are not. These places, as natural and beautiful and untouched as they seem, are larger than us. To exist, these places require effort. So understand the places you love. Learn who works to protect them, and who makes decisions on their behalf. Give your efforts to these places, and truly get outside." — Amy Morrison Stay Wild Magazine, Spring 2015, insert
"Every living thing has the same wish to flourish again and again. Beyond that, our differences are quibbles. I do not want to be a lonely species set adrift from all the rest." — Craig Childs The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild
"We can have wilderness without freedom; we can have wilderness without human life at all, but we cannot have freedom without wilderness." — Edward Abbey
"Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond." — Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
