“In the words of Yellowstone Park's wolf biologist Michael Phillips, wolf conservation has become "a dramatic expression of the goodness of the human spirit. It shows that we respect the rights of other life-forms, even when they may cause problems. It shows that we are capable and committed to correcting the mistakes of the past. Wolf restoration is a touchstone for measuring our reverence for what we have inherited and for the legacy we leave our children.”

“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.”

“..."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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“According to the Iroquois, when the Creator made the animals of the earth, He shot each one in the left hind leg so that humans would be able to catch them, but He missed the wolf.”