Top 60 Quotes & Sayings by Stewart Udall

Mining is like a search-and-destroy mission.

Some environmentalists have had the feeling that Indians are not good stewards. I've always been critical of that.

So many people of my generation who served in the government were prisoners of the Cold War culture, still are.

It gives me satisfaction to help people.

Nuclear energy people perceive the greenhouse effect as a fresh wind blowing at their back.

I like the story about Henry David Thoreau, who, when he was on his death bed, his family sent for a minister. The minister said, 'Henry, have you made your peace with God?' Thoreau said, 'I didn't know we'd quarreled.'

One of the best things that came out of the Carter administration was the energy policy. The best things in it were renewable energy.

Washington's a cesspool of money.

In the first weeks after Hiroshima, extravagant statements by President Truman and other official spokesmen for the U.S. government transformed the inception of the atomic age into the most mythologized event in American history.

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.

Nixon was a good president on the environment. Gerald Ford was good.

Cherish sunsets, wild creatures and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth.

I don't remember a big fight between the Republicans and Democrats in the Nixon administration or President Gerald Ford and so on.

The auto industry must acknowledge that a rational transportation policy should seek a balance between individual convenience, the efficient use of limited resources, and urban-living values that protect spaciousness, natural beauty, and human-scale mobility.

I think the Colorado Plateau is the most scenic area in the world - let's begin with that. Not just the United States.

I'm trying to encourage my children's generation and the other ones coming to return to basic American principles.

Auto executives have shunned the limits-of-growth issues and concentrated nearly all their energies on the next quarter's sales and next year's models.

Nature will take precedence over the needs of the modern man.

Lady Bird Johnson did more than plant flowers in public places. She served the country superbly by planting environmental values in the minds of the nation's leaders and citizens.

The atomic weapons race and the secrecy surrounding it crushed American democracy. It induced us to conduct government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality.

Wilderness, like the national park system, was an American idea.

Federal judges are just very reluctant to stick the government with responsibility.

The environmental effects of the automobile are well known: motor vehicles cause, for example, as much as 75 percent of the noise and 80 percent of the air pollution in our cities, and the industry must face mounting pressure from environmentalists.

The choice facing the American people is not between growth and stagnation, but between short-term growth and long-term disaster.

Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.

I don't like the term 'dynasty.'

A limit on the automobile population of the United States would be the best of news for our cities. The end of automania would save open spaces, encourage wiser land use, and contribute greatly to ending suburban sprawl.

The Indians may have in their religion and culture a reverence for the land. But then they get into the pressures created by modern society. Unless they are reasonably well-educated, they can't deal with them.

I am not proposing that we bring our oil and auto industries to a screeching halt. There is still time to begin a series of gradual steps toward new transportation and energy policies, livable cities, and more humane, efficient transit systems.

Each generation has its own rendezvous with the land, for despite our fee titles and claims of ownership, we are all brief tenants on this planet. By choice, or by default, we will carve out a land legacy for our heirs.

Over the long haul of life on this planet, it is the ecologists, and not the bookkeepers of business, who are the ultimate accountants.

The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth, and the Native American shared this elemental ethic: The land was alive to his loving touch, and he, its son, was brother to all creatures.

There's not a single person in Arizona today who would say the Grand Canyon was a mistake.

In a region with a growing population, if you're doing nothing, you're losing ground.

Utah today remains a battleground for land-use policies.

I plowed fields with horses and worked as a hired hand in high school for 50 cents a day.

If, in our haste to 'progress,' the economics of ecology are disregarded by citizens and policy makers alike, the result will be an ugly America. We cannot afford an America where expedience tramples upon esthetics and development decisions are made with an eye only on the present.

Here in the United States we're now consuming about three gallons of petroleum per person per day. That's twenty pounds of oil per person per day. We only consume about four pounds of oxygen per person per day. We're consuming five times more oil each day, here in the United States than we are oxygen. We've become the oil tribe.

I dont remember a big fight between the Republicans and Democrats in the Nixon administration or President Gerald Ford and so on.

The national parklands have a major role in providing superlative opportunities for outdoor recreation, but they have other people serving values. They can provide an experience in conservation education for the young people of the country; they can enrich our literary and artistic consciousness; they can help create social values; contribute to our civic consciousness; remind us of our debt to the land of our fathers.

Society as we know it is almost a conspiracy against human health. One of the main forces working to counteract that is the trailsman.

We Americans are a funny people. We say that our favorite outdoor recreation is 'walking for pleasure' (or so it is reported in Outdoor Recreation Trends). Yet the average housewife will jump into the family car-or one of them-to go around the corner for a bottle of aspirin and a television guide. The businessman who walks four blocks to an appointment is the exception rather than the rule.

We're all pretty individualistic.

Admittedly, we must move ahead with the development of our land resources. Likewise, our technology must be refined. But in the long run life will succeed only in a life-giving environment, and we can no longer afford unnecessary sacrifices of living space and natural landscape to 'progress.'

The Atomic Age was born in secrecy, and for two decades after Hiroshima, the high priests of the cult of the atom concealed vital information about the risks to human health posed by radiation. Dr. Alice Stewart, an audacious and insightful medical researcher, was one of the first experts to alert the world to the dangers of low-level radiation.

Cherish sunsets, wild creatures, and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth!

Where nature is concerned, familiarity breeds love and knowledge, not contempt.

The National Park Service today exemplifies one of the highest traditions of public service.

Over the long haul of life on the planet, it is the ecologists, and not the bookkeepers of business, who are the ultimate accountants.

It is obvious that the best qualities in man must atrophy in a standing-room-only environment.

As the master politician navigates the ship of state, he both creates and responds to public opinion. Adept at tacking with the wind, he also succeeds, at times, in generating breezes of his own.

America today stands poised on a pinnacle of wealth and power, yet we live in a land of vanishing beauty, of increasing ugliness, of shrinking open space, and of an over-all environment that is diminished daily by pollution and noise and blight.

It induced us to conduct government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality.

If you want inner peace, find it in solitude, not speed, and if you would find yourself, look to the land from which you came and to which you go.

Gross National Product is our Holy Grail.

A land ethic for tomorrow should...stress the oneness of our resources and the live-and-help-live logic of the great chain of life.

The real story of the settlement of the West was work, not conquest

I like the story about Henry David Thoreau, who, when he was on his death bed, his family sent for a minister. The minister said, 'Henry, have you made your peace with God?' Thoreau said, 'I didn't know we'd quarreled.

The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth.

For those who want to understand the issues of the environmental crisis, Encounters with the Archdruid is a superb book. McPhee reveals more nuances of the value revolution that dominates the new age of ecology than most writers could pack into a volume twice as long. I marvel at his capacity to listen intently and extract the essence of a man and his philosophy in the fewest possible words.