Only the element of chance is needed to make war a gamble, and that element is never absent.
Whatever landscape a child is exposed to early on, that will be the sort of gauze through which he or she will see all the world afterwards.
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed. . . We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.
We are the most dangerous species of life on the planet, and every other species, even the earth itself, has cause to fear our power to exterminate. But we are also the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.
National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.
We simply need that wild country available to us. . . For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.
One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.
No one is born gay. The idea is ridiculous, but it is symptomatic of our overpoliticized climate that such assertions are given instant credence by gay activists and their media partisans. I think what gay men are remembering is that they were born different.
You make due with the time you have here. Hopefully when you pass on, somebody can look back and say, 'Wow, they made a difference in some kind of way. '
Pretend to be weak, so your enemy may grow arrogant.
Serra High school, to me, was my most enjoyable time for me in my entire life. That was the only time I was free. We just played baseball because it was fun.