David Brower > Quotes

“We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”
― David Brower

“We must begin thinking like a river if we are to leave a legacy of beauty and life for future generations.”
― David Brower

“The wild places are where we began. When they end, so do we.”
― David Brower

“We need the sea. We need a place to stand and touch and listen - to feel the pusle of the world as the surf rolls in.”
― David Brower

“Polite conversationalists leave no mark save the scars upon the Earth that could have been prevented had they stood their ground.”
― David Brower

“If I could go back to a point in history to try to get things to come out differently, I would go back and tell moses to go up the mountain again and get the other tablet. Because the Ten Commandments just tell us what we are supped to do with one another, not a word about our relationship to the earth. Genesis starts with these commands: multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it. We have multiplied very well, we have replenished our populations very well, we have subdued it all too well, and we don’t have any other instruction.”
― David Brower

“Life can begin at eighty, but you don't need to wait that long.”
― David Brower, Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth

“Politicians are like weather vanes. Our job is to make the wind blow.”
― David Brower, Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth

“I have not yet walked the forest trails, high meadows, snows and rocks of the Alpine Lakes area of the Cascades; even so, I do not feel myself a stranger there. Great many wild places of Earth I have not visited, and never shall be able to, but I have known some of them intimately, with delight, and thus claim citizenship of all the wild place of all the states and nations of all the continents and seas.

From citizenship comes responsibility to care.”
― David Brower

“This island of Earth of ours is finite in resources, including wilderness- particularly wilderness. The dwindling worldwide reservoir of wild lands must be the concern of everyone, but especially of those of us who have been privileged to experience wildness, and thus learn its value to the individual human soul and to the spirit of mankind.”
― David Brower

“I don't think we were built to be safe," he said. "I think we were built to try things.”
― David Brower, Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth

“This land belongs to me, and me to it, even should we never meet boot-to-trail, ice-ax-to-snow, face-to-rain, mouth-to-creek, nose-to-flower, eye-to-sky.”
― David Brower

“Justice William 0. Douglas once told President Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Any government bureau more than ten years old should be abolished, because after that it becomes more concerned with its image than with its mission.”
― David Brower, Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth

“Thoreau asked long ago, "What's the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?" We”
― David Brower, Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth