“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.”

“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.”

“One day during his time in the Southwest, Leopold and several companions chanced upon a female wolf ans shot her. "We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes --something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”

“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.”

“John Stanwell-Fletcher published an article in Natural History magazine, declaring that after spending three years in the Canadian wilderness, he believed more than any creature the wolf represented "the spirit of wilderness itself." If the wolf is exterminated, said Stanwell-Fletcher, "we shall have lost one of the most virile, wise, and beautiful of all wild creatures.”

“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.”

“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.”