Although mountains may guide migrations, the plains are the regions where people dwell in greatest numbers.

History in its broadest aspect is a record of man's migrations from one environment to another.

The human organism inherits so delicate an adjustment to climate that, in spite of man's boasted ability to live anywhere, the strain of the frozen North eliminates the more nervous and active types of mind.

Year by year we are learning that in this restless, strenuous American life of ours vacations are essential.

In America the most widespread type of forest is the evergreen coniferous woodland of the north.

Man could not stay there forever. He was bound to spread to new regions, partly because of his innate migratory tendency and partly because of Nature's stern urgency.

The Indians could not undertake any widespread cultivation of the plains not only because they lacked iron tools but also because they had no draft animals.

Thus the races, though alike in their physical response to climate, may possibly be different in their mental response because they have approached America by different paths.

As a matter of fact, an ordinary desert supports a much greater variety of plants than does either a forest or a prairie.

Surprising as it may seem, this study indicates that similar conditions are best for all sorts of races.

The buffalo is a surprisingly stupid animal.

Although mountains may guide migrations, the plains are the regions where people dwell in greatest numbers.

For the source of any characteristic so widespread and uniform as this adaptation to environment we must go back to the very beginning of the human race.

From first to last the civilization of America has been bound up with its physical environment.

America is the last great goal of these migrations.

We are learning, too, that the love of beauty is one of Nature's greatest healers.

America forms the longest and straightest bone in the earth's skeleton.

According to the now almost universally accepted theory, all the races of mankind had a common origin.

It seems strange that almost no other traces of the strong vikings are found in America.

Curiously enough man's body and his mind appear to differ in their climatic adaptations.

The Negro, however, has been tested on an extensive scale.

The coast of British Columbia was one of the three chief centers of aboriginal America.

In fact, the history of North America has been perhaps more profoundly influenced by man's inheritance from his past homes than by the physical features of his present home.

A journey of four hundred and thirty miles can be made in any part of the United States, but in Turkey it takes as many days.

The evidence points to central Asia as man's original home, for the general movement of human migrations has been outward from that region and not inward.

Although farming of any sort was almost as impossible in the plains as in the dry regions of winter rains farther west, the abundance of buffaloes made life much easier in many respects.

Geologists are rapidly becoming convinced that the mammals spread from their central Asian point of origin largely because of great variations in climate.

Fertile soil, level plains, easy passage across the mountains, coal, iron, and other metals imbedded in the rocks, and a stimulating climate, all shower their blessings upon man.

Again and again, to be sure, on the way to America, and under many other circumstances, man has passed through the most adverse climates and has survived, but he has flourished and waxed strong only in certain zones.

The geysers and hot springs of the Yellowstone are another proof of recent volcanic activity.

No part of the world can be truly understood without a knowledge of its garment of vegetation, for this determines not only the nature of the animal inhabitants but also the occupations of the majority of human beings.

Today, no less than in the past, the tetrahedral form of the earth and the relation of the tetrahedron to the poles and to the equator preserve the conditions that favor rapid evolution.

After washing there was no place to pour the water except out of the window onto the heads of the people in the streets, which is the proper place to throw everything that is not wanted.

Except on their southern borders the great northern forests are not good as a permanent home for man.

Nevertheless most of the evergreen forests of the north must always remain the home of wild animals and trappers, a backward region in which it is easy for a great fur company to maintain a practical monopoly.

Nor should we exclude the possibility that Islamic terrorism may begin to make common cause with Western political extremists of the far Left and far Right.

In addressing a task, one almost always has several possible options, sometimes only a few, and they may all be practical and functional. But they lack the aesthetic aspect that raises it to architecture.

All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end.

Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that a large sum of elements may have properties not found in a smaller sample of them.

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.

This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.

It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups.

A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.

Lives of great men oft remind us as we o'er their pages turn, That we too may leave behind us - Letters that we ought to burn.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don't believe too much into inspiration, only I'm waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It's a little too easy to say that.