David Brower Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

Sometimes luck is with you, and sometimes not, but the important thing is to take the dare. Those who climb mountains or raft rivers understand this.

David Brower
Politicians are like weather vanes. Our job is to make the wind blow.

David Brower
To me, a wilderness is where the flow of wildness is essentially uninterrupted by technology; without wilderness the world is a cage.

David Brower
We may learn anew what compassion and beauty are, and pause to listen to the Earth's music.

David Brower
When you understand how recent an arrival we are, in comparison with a forest or a mountain, and you begin to understand how much wildness contributed to making us as a successful evolutionary project, you acquire some humility.

David Brower
While the death of young men in war is unfortunate, it is no more serious than the touching of mountains and wilderness areas by humankind.

David Brower
Truth and beauty can still win battles. We need more art, more passion, more wit in defense of the Earth.

David Brower
A fallen tree supports a biological community that may be essential to the existence of the forest itself.

David Brower
My feeling is we need to save wilderness for its own sake, for the mysterious and complex knowledge it has within it. Thoreau was right when he said, "In wilderness is the preservation of the world."

David Brower
A condor is about 5 percent feathers, blood, and bone, and about 95 percent place. Place designs the condor, as it does the Arctic tern and the monarch butterfly.

David Brower
I started out as a boy bent over a spring. Then I climbed mountains. I became a conservationist. Then I saw what we all were doing, and I wanted to stop us from doing worse. Now I want to restore what once was, not for an old man's memories, but for a baby's smile.

David Brower
Although Thomas Jefferson argued that no one generation has a right to encroach upon another generation's freedom, the future's right to know the freedom of wilderness is going fast.

David Brower
"Butterfly is a stupid word," the Spaniard said; "maripose is so much more beautiful." "I much prefer farfalla," the Italian countered. The woman from Paris said, "papillon, of course." The Japanese suggested, "I like the softness of chocho-san." The German bristled and demanded, "What's the matter with schmetterling?"

David Brower
We need boundaries around cities, not around wildness.

David Brower
Let us begin. Let us restore the Earth. Let the mountains talk, and the rivers run.

David Brower