Stewart Udall

thumb|Over the long haul of life on this planet it is the ecologists — and not the bookkeepers of business — who are the ultimate accountants. Stewart Lee Udall (January 31, 1920 – March 20, 2010) was an American politician and later, a federal government official who belonged to the Democratic Party. After serving three terms as a congressman from Arizona, he served as Secretary of the Interior from 1961 to 1969, under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. A staunch liberal, he is best known for enthusiastically promoting environmentalism while in the cabinet, with success primarily under President Johnson. Quotes Life is good in America, but the good life still eludes us. Our standard of living is admittedly high, but measured by those things that truly distinguish a civilization, our living standards are hardly high at all. We have, I fear, confused power with greatness. Commencement Address, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (June 13, 1965): cited in Bruce Bohle (ed.) The Home Book of American Quotations (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1967), p. 187 We who have chopped and mined and built and machined our way to wealth and power now grope out from our cities...for something we cannot forget. Beyond the noise and the asphalt and ugly architecture, we yearn for the long waves and beach grass; we see white wings on morning air, and in the afternoon, the shadows cast by the doorways of history. Dedication of Cape Cod National Seashore, in The New York Times (June 5, 1966): cited in C. W. Mattison; Joseph Alvarez, Man and His Resources in Today's World (Mankato, MN: Creative Educational Society, Inc., 1967), p. 99, and in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), p. 288 Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man. 1976: Agenda for Tomorrow (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968), p. 101 Gross National Product is our Holy Grail; the economists and statisticians its keepers. Man... an Endangered Species? (U.S. Department of the Interior, 1968), foreword Over the long haul of life on this planet it is the ecologists — and not the bookkeepers of business — who are the ultimate accountants. Speech to the First National Congress on Optimum Population and Environment (June 9, 1970), cited in Noel Hinrichs (ed.) Population, Environment and People (McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1971), p. 144, and in Alec Lewis (ed.) The Quotable Quotations Book (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1980), p. 62 Where nature is concerned, familiarity breeds love and knowledge, not contempt. Cited in The Forbes Scrapbook of Thoughts on the Business of Life (New York: Forbes Inc., 1989), p. 268 The real story of settlement was a story of work, not conquest. The Forgotten Founders: Rethinking the History of the Old West (Island Press, 2002), pp. 83–4 Cherish sunsets, wild creatures, and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the Earth! Letter to his grandchildren (December 24, 2009); cited in Terry Tempest Williams, The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks (New York: Sarah Crichton Books; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), p. 275 The Quiet Crisis (1963) New York, Chicago, San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart & Winston Each generation has its own rendezvous with the land, for despite our fee titles and claims of ownership, we are all brief tenants on this planet. By choice, or by default, we will carve out a land legacy for our heirs. Foreword America today stands poised on a pinnacle of wealth and power, yet we live in a land of vanishing beauty, of increasing ugliness, of shrinking open space, and of an overall environment that is diminished daily by pollution and noise and blight. Foreword The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth, and the native American shared this elemental ethic: the land was alive to his loving touch, and he, its son, was brother to all creatures. Ch. 1 It is obvious that the best qualities in man must atrophy in a standing-room-only environment. Ch. 13 A land ethic for tomorrow should be as honest as Thoreau's Walden, and as comprehensive as the sensitive science of ecology. It should stress the oneness of our resources and the live-and-help-live logic of the great chain of life. If, in our haste to "progress," the economics of ecology are disregarded by citizens and policy makers alike, the result will be an ugly America. Ch. 14 If you want inner peace find it in solitude, not speed, and if you would find yourself, look to the land from which you came and to which you go. Ch. 14 External links Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives Category:United States Secretaries of the Interior Category:Democratic Party (United States) politicians Category:Lawyers from the United States Category:Non-fiction authors from the United States Category:Politicians from Arizona Category:1920 births Category:2010 deaths