Quotes from Stewart Udall

I plowed fields with horses and worked as a hired hand in high school for 50 cents a day.

Cherish sunsets, wild creatures, and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth!

One of the best things that came out of the Carter administration was the energy policy. The best things in it were renewable energy.

I don't remember a big fight between the Republicans and Democrats in the Nixon administration or President Gerald Ford and so on.

I am not proposing that we bring our oil and auto industries to a screeching halt. There is still time to begin a series of gradual steps toward new transportation and energy policies, livable cities, and more humane, efficient transit systems.

There's not a single person in Arizona today who would say the Grand Canyon was a mistake.

So many people of my generation who served in the government were prisoners of the Cold War culture, still are.

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.

Mining is like a search-and-destroy mission.

Over the long haul of life on this planet, it is the ecologists, and not the bookkeepers of business, who are the ultimate accountants.

The choice facing the American people is not between growth and stagnation, but between short-term growth and long-term disaster.

I think the Colorado Plateau is the most scenic area in the world - let's begin with that. Not just the United States.

The real story of the settlement of the West was work, not conquest

Some environmentalists have had the feeling that Indians are not good stewards. I've always been critical of that.

Federal judges are just very reluctant to stick the government with responsibility.

I like the story about Henry David Thoreau, who, when he was on his death bed, his family sent for a minister. The minister said, 'Henry, have you made your peace with God?' Thoreau said, 'I didn't know we'd quarreled.'

Utah today remains a battleground for land-use policies.

The auto industry must acknowledge that a rational transportation policy should seek a balance between individual convenience, the efficient use of limited resources, and urban-living values that protect spaciousness, natural beauty, and human-scale mobility.