“After enduring humankind's unrelenting persecution, the wolf had become something nature had never intended, "the curse of a generation of ranchers and the symbol of destruction across a wide and fertile land." It wasn't the wolf who was the villain, claimed Caras, but man, "eternally guilty of crimes beyond counting --man the killer, the slayer, the luster-for-blood --[who] had sought to expurgate himself of his sin and guilt by condemning the predatory animals.”

“For centuries the wolf was North America's beast, an animal transmogrified into a mythic and blood-lustful killer, pursued by every conceivable means, reviled with such savage vehemence that nothing short of wholesale extirpation was imaginable. Today, the symbolic power of the wolf remains while our perception of the animal, as well as ourselves, has vastly changed.That such a transformation was ever possible at all is the ultimate triumph of wolf recovery.”

“But Olson had learned that being a wolf advocate wasn't easy, for "the politics of wolf preservation and the science of studying wolves is more vicious and complicated than any wolf pack I've had the pleasure of studying.”

“Writing to A. Brazier Howell, Murie admitted that he had grown "very fond of native mammals, amounting almost to a passion," and thought of the wolf as a "noble animal, with admirable cunning and strength.”

“From that time forth, whenever a critical decision had to be made concerning the future, the Oneida considered "how much was enough and how much was too much." Someone would rise and pose the question: "Tell me now my brothers! Tell me now my sisters! Who speaks for Wolf?"Like other Native Americans, the Oneida were soon overwhelmed by an invading culture that had scant understanding of such a sense of nuance toward the earth, plants, and animals, and in particular, wolves.Centuries would pass before anyone would venture again to speak for Wolf.”

“Despite its misrepresentations, Mowat's book shattered many myths and untruths that had hung about the wolf's neck for centuries. Mowat's wolves weren't savage brutes, but instead were playful and social creatures, good and protective parents --animals entirely ill-deserving of the treatment they had received.”

“..."we have been fed for so many generations on tales of the Wolf's ferocity, treachery, rapacity, cowardice, and strength" that most people have a "wholly wrong picture of this most interesting animal.”