William Temple Hornaday Quotes

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We no longer destroy great works of art. They are treasured, and regarded as of priceless value; but we have yet to attain the state of civilization where the destruction of a glorious work of Nature, whether it be a cliff, a forest, or a species of mammal or bird, is regarded with equal abhorrence.

William Temple Hornaday
We are weary of witnessing the greed, selfishness and cruelty of "civilized" man toward the wild creatures of the earth. We are sick of tales of slaughter and pictures of carnage. It is time for a sweeping Reformation; and that is precisely what we now demand.

William Temple Hornaday
It is quite beyond the power of words to convey adequate conceptions of the reptilian giants that formed the group of dinosaurs. The Brontosaurus, the Diplodocus, the Triceratops, the Stegosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus all must be seen in order that the wonders of them may be appreciated.

William Temple Hornaday
The fatalistic idea that bag-limit laws can save the game is today the curse of all our game birds, mammals and fishes! It is a fraud, a delusion and a snare. That miserable fetch has been worshipped much too long. Our game is being exterminated, everywhere, by blind insistence upon "open seasons," and solemn reliance upon "legal bag-limits."

William Temple Hornaday
Except within our conservation areas, an earthly paradise is being turned into an earthly Hades; and it is not savages nor primitive men who are doing this, but men and women who boast of their civilization.

William Temple Hornaday
The preservation of animal and plant life, and of the general beauty of Nature, is one of the foremost duties of the men and women of today. It is an imperative duty, because it must be performed at once, for otherwise it will be too late. Every possible means of preservation - sentimental, educational and legislative - must be employed.

William Temple Hornaday
Trained zoologists are men and women of mental resources. They are accustomed to taking initiative, to creation, to organization and direction. A well trained zoologist is like a high-class business man; he knows how to attack any subject or cause and go to the bottom of it. More than that, he knows how to find out how to promote any cause.

William Temple Hornaday
It is time for all men to be told in the plainest terms that there never has existed, anywhere in historic times, a volume of wild life so great that civilized man could not quickly exterminate it by his methods of destruction.

William Temple Hornaday
To assume that every wild beast and bird is a sacred creature, peacefully dwelling in an earthly paradise, is a mistake. They have their wisdom and their folly, their joys and their sorrows, their trials and tribulations.

William Temple Hornaday
He who attempts to study any small group of animal forms without first gaining a bird's-eye view of the surrounding territory, and becoming familiar with the zoological grand divisions that lie around him, loses much.

William Temple Hornaday
An Animal is a living creature belonging to the animal kingdom; but the word is commonly, though incorrectly, used to designate mammals alone.

William Temple Hornaday
And yet the game of North America does not belong wholly and exclusively to the men who kill! The other ninety-seven per cent of the People have vested rights in it.... Posterity has claims upon it that no man can ignore.... A continent without wild life is like a forest with no leaves on the trees.

William Temple Hornaday
He who knows the wild animals of the world always travels among friends, and in every land he finds a welcome.

William Temple Hornaday
No man has a right, either moral or legal, to destroy or squander an inheritance of his children that he holds for them in trust. And man, the wasteful and greedy spendthrift that he is, has not created even the humblest of the species of birds, mammals and fishes that adorn and enrich this earth.

William Temple Hornaday