"...how quickly our moment together had already become a memory." — James Campbell Braving It: A Father, a Daughter, and an Unforgettable Journey into the Alaskan Wild
"This present moment / that lives on / to become / long ago." — Gary Snyder This Present Moment, “Go Now”
"I am growing increasingly aware that friendship is worth much more than success. Friends have remained and everything else is history." — Nejc Zaplotnik, translated by Mimi Marinsek Alpinist Magazine, Issue 74, "Nejc Zaplotnik, Mountain Poet", excerpted from "Pot"
"I am alone like an arrow in flight, but I remember the bow and the strong arm that pulled it." — Jim Reynolds
"The freedom to do as we choose is essential to the nature and history of climbing—those who can do, do. That involves the burden of personal responsibility, and is a tremendous part of what we love about climbing. Whether or not that freedom is sustainable in this day and age is another question. … Since we are left to our own devices with the freedom of climbing, what do our actions say about us?" — Kelly Cordes The Tower: A Chronicle of Climbing and Controversy on Cerro Torre
"Paradise found is paradise lost." — Edward Wilson The Future of Life
"I think all the wrong things are beautiful: invasive cheatgrass, the glint of sprinklers firing in late-day light, the glossy introduced rainbow trout. I realize it’s hard for me to tell what’s native and natural, what’s been altered by people, and what counts as history." — Heather Hansman Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West
"What counts as valuable seems arbitrary; the human demarcation line seems blurry. Even for an expert, it’s hard to tell what’s natural or native at this point because the changes in the ecosystem are similarly subtle and blurred. Ranchers argue that irrigation smooths out the seasonal variation in stream flow and recharges the aquifer, creating habitat, making it better for people and wildlife. But it’s not necessarily historically native animals that would be there if ranchers weren’t watering the land. That’s the tricky part of trying to recreate an unclear past." — Heather Hansman Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West
"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy." — John C. Sawhill
"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
"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." — Eric Hoffer
"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
"To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another." — John Burroughs
"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
"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering." — 4th Doctor Doctor Who, "The Face of Evil"
"You’re not gonna be able to reverse history—but you can change what the future looks like for sure." — Brandon Belcher For the Love of Climbing, Episode 17, "What We Know"
"And in a lot of areas, if you’re wanting to get into climbing, you have to go outside of your neighborhood—which can already have its own sort of loaded historical trauma, depending on the neighborhood and stuff like that. You’re going into a space where, primarily, it’s a lot of white people handling ropes. Emily Taylor has always highlighted this: there’s a lot of loaded historical trauma with that imagery." — Brandon Belcher For the Love of Climbing, Episode 17, "What We Know"
"Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some." — Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale
