We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may not ever need to go there.

Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.

To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.

Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where …

My job is to save the fucking wilderness. I don't know anything else worth saving.

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.

I am glad that the life of pandas is so dull by human standards, for our efforts at conservation have little moral value if we preserve creatures only as human…