Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.

For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.

You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light.

Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.

Grown men do not need leaders.

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages - as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already.

Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.

There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

Climbing K2 or floating the Grand Canyon in an inner tube; there are some things one would rather have done than do.

Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when and if she wants it, amounts to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.

That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding.

Say what you like about my bloody murderous government,' I says, 'but don't insult me poor bleedin' country.

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.

If the end does not justify the means - what can?

A drink a day keeps the shrink away.

Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.

What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.

Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell.

Taxation: how the sheep are shorn.

Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.

Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.

Freedom begins between the ears.

Most academic economists know nothing of economy. In fact, they know little of anything.

Charity should be spontaneous. Calculated altruism is an affront

Who needs astrology? The wise man gets by on fortune cookies.

I would never betray a friend to serve a cause. Never reject a friend to help an institution. Great nations may fall in ruin before I would sell a friend to save them.

There is science logic reason there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.

Concrete is heavy iron is hard but the grass will prevail.

A true conservative must necessarily be a conservationalist.

A crude meal no doubt but the best of all sauces is hunger.

You cant study the darkness by flooding it with light.

What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote.

When the situation is desperate it is too late to be serious. Be playful.

A world without huge regions of total wilderness would be a cage a world without lions and tigers and vultures and snakes and elk and bison would be will be a human zoo. A high tech slum.

The more fantastic an ideology or theology the more fanatic its adherents.

The terror of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years.

Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline the first often tasting like the second.

Climbing K2 or floating the Grand Canyon in an inner tube there are some things one would rather have done than do.

May your trails be crooked winding lonesome dangerous leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

Homosexuality like androgyny might be an instinctive racial response to overpopulation crowding and stress. Both flourish when empire reaches its apogee.