Foundations of Modern Environmental Thought:
Quotations from Major Contributors:
For each individual, notice how the quotes represent key aspects of his viewpoint.
(You should also review class notes and pertinent sections in Chapter 1 of Origins textbook.)
Henry David Thoreau (from Walden): The first quote was read aloud in class. Notice message in all quotes: “simplify”.
 “Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in
extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs
be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your
accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms
and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder
and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed
who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a
hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.”
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“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
“My greatest skill in life has been to want but little.”
“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with
Nature herself.”
George Perkins Marsh (from Man and Nature): The first quote was read aloud in class. Notice all the references to
different natural resources, as well as his warning about the harm that comes from degrading those resources.
 “He [civilized, modern man] has felled the forests whose network of fibrous roots bound the mould to the rocky
skeleton of the earth; but had he allowed here and there a belt of woodland to reproduce itself by spontaneous
propagation, most of the mischiefs which his reckless destruction of the natural protection of the soil has
occasioned would have been averted. He has broken up the mountain reservoirs, the percolation of whose
waters through unseen channels supplied the fountains that refreshed his cattle and fertilized his fields; but he
has neglected to maintain the cisterns and the canals of irrigation which a wise antiquity had constructed to
neutralize the consequences of its own imprudence. While he has torn the thin glebe [that is, soil] which
confined the light earth of extensive plains, and has destroyed the fringe of semi-aquatic plants which skirted the
coast and checked the drifting of the sea sand, he has failed to prevent the spreading of dunes by clothing them
with tribes of animated nature whose spoil he could convert to his own uses, and he has not protected the birds
which prey on the insects most destructive to his own harvests. . . .”
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“The ravages committed by man subvert the relations and destroy the balance which nature had established
between her organized and her inorganic creations; and she avenges herself upon the intruder, by letting loose
upon her defaced provinces destructive energies hitherto kept in check by organic forces destined to be his best
auxiliaries, but which he has unwisely dispersed and driven from the field of action. When the forest is gone, the
great reservoir of moisture stored up in its vegetable mould is evaporated, and returns only in deluges of rain to
wash away the parched dust into which that mould has been converted. The well-wooded and humid hills are
turned to ridges of dry rock, which encumbers the low grounds and chokes the watercourses with its debris, and–
except in countries favored with an equable distribution of rain through the seasons, and a moderate and regular
inclination of surface–the whole earth, unless rescued by human art from the physical degradation to which it
tends, becomes an assemblage of bald mountains, of barren, turfless hills, and of swampy and malarious plains.”
John Muir: Notice his passion for the natural values of Hetch Hetchy Valley and his ecocentric / preservation views.
 "Hetch Hetchy is … one of nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples…. These … devotees of
ravaging commercialism seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the
God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. . ..”
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“It appears . . . that Hetch Hetchy Valley, far from being a plain, common, rockbound meadow, as many who
have not seen it seem to suppose, is a grand landscape garden, one of Nature’s rarest and most precious
mountain temples. As in Yosemite, the sublime rocks of its walls seem to glow with life, whether leaning back in
repose or standing erect in thoughtful attitudes, giving welcome to storms and calms alike, their brows in the
sky, their feet set in the groves and gay flowery meadows, while birds, bees, and butterflies help the river and
waterfalls to stir all the air into music – thinks frail and fleeting and types of permanence meeting here and
blending, just as they do in Yosemite, to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her.”
Gifford Pinchot: Notice his anthropocentric views that emphasize “utilitarian conservation”.
 “The first great fact about conservation is that it stands for development. There has been a fundamental
misconception that conservation means nothing but the husbanding of resources for future generations. There
could be no more serious mistake. Conservation does mean provision for the future, but it means also and first of
all the recognition of the right of the present generation to the fullest necessary use of all the resources with
which this country is so abundantly blessed. Conservation demands the welfare of this generation first, and
afterward the welfare of the generations to follow.”
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“Conservation means the wise use of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men.”
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“The earth and its resources belong of right to its people.”
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“The outgrowth of conservation, the inevitable result is national efficiency.”
Aldo Leopold (from A Sand County Almanac): The first two quotes were presented in class. Notice his definition of
“right”, his view on the role of humans in the environment, and what he proposed as a “land ethic”.
 “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong
when it does otherwise.”
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“In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member
and citizen of it.”
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"All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of
interdependent parts.... The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils,
waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land...."
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Also see quote on page 14 of Origins text in which Leopold reflects on having watched the female wolf’s “fierce
green fire” in her eyes die when she died. The quote begins: “I was young then, and full of trigger itch….” (and
continues to the end of the paragraph). This quote is a good representation of Leopold’s change in viewpoint, as
his career progressed. (See Class notes for details.)