“money supplants skill; it's possession allows us to become happily stupid.”

“electronic media have become an environment of their own- to the list of neighborhood and region and continent and planet we must now add television as a place where we live. and the problem is not that it exists- the problem is that it supplants. it's simplicity makes complexity hard to fathom.”

“what sets wilderness apart in the modern day is not that it's dangerous (it's almost certainly safer than any town or road) or that it's solitary (you can, so they say, be alone in a crowded room) or full of exotic animals (there are more at the zoo). it's that five miles out in the woods you can't buy anything.”

“There is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend that it's not really there.”

“what you do every day is what forms your mind and precious few of us can or would spend most days outdoors.”

“It's a quiet revolution begun by ordinary people with the stuff of our daily lives.”

“Management" of anything as complicated as a woods requires more humility than comes easily to our species, at least in its American incarnation.”