Quotes from Richard Louv

Time in nature is not leisure time; it's an essential investment in our chidlren's health (and also, by the way, in our own).

Progress does not have to be patented to be worthwhile. Progress can also be measured by our interactions with nature and its preservation. Can we teach children to look at a flower and see all the things it represents: beauty, the health of an ecosystem, and the potential for healing?

Unlike television, nature does not steal time; it amplifies it. Nature offers healing for a child living in a destructive family or neighborhood.

One of my students told me that every time she learns the name of a plant, she feels as if she is meeting someone new. Giving a name to something is a way of knowing it.

Reading stimulates the ecology of the imagination.

Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually.

The pleasure of being alive is brought into sharper focus when you need to pay attention to staying alive.

Prize the natural spaces and shorelines most of all, because once they're gone, with rare exceptions they're gone forever. In our bones we need the natural curves of hills, the scent of chapparal, the whisper of pines, the possibility of wildness. We require these patches of nature for our mental health and our spiritual resilience.

Unlike television, reading does not swallow the senses or dictate thought. Reading stimulates the ecology of the imagination. Can you remember the wonder you felt when first reading The Jungle Book or Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn? Kipling's world within a world; Twain's slow river, the feel of freedom and sand on the secret island, and in the depths of the cave?

If you can't live in the land you love, love the land you're in.

quality of life isn't measured only by what we gain, but also by what we trade for it.

Parents are told to turn off the TV and restrict video game time, but we hear little about what the kids should do physically during their non-electronic time. The usual suggestion is organized sports. But consider this: The obesity epidemic coincides with the greatest increase in organized children's sports in history.

and old Indian saying: 'It's better to know one mountain than to climb many.

Man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; [the Lakota] knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. —LUTHER STANDING BEAR (C. 1868–1939)

This principle holds that a reconnection to the natural world is fundamental to human health, well-being, spirit, and survival.

The physical exercise and emotional stretching that children enjoy in unorganized play is more varied and less time-bound than is found in organized sports. Playtime—especially unstructured, imaginative, exploratory play—is increasingly recognized as an essential component of wholesome child development.

Why do so many Americans say they want their children to watch less TV, yet continue to expand the opportunities for them to watch it? More important, why do so many people no longer consider the physical world worth watching?

What would our lives be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they are in technology?

In nature, a child finds freedom, fantasy, and privacy: a place distant from the adult world, a separate peace.

Nature is often overlooked as a healing balm for the emotional hardships in a child's life.

Kids are absolutely starved for positive adult contact.

IT TAKES TIME—loose, unstructured dreamtime—to experience nature in a meaningful way.

An indoor (or backseat) childhood does reduce some dangers to children; but other risks are heightened, including risks to physical and psychological health, risk to children's concept and perception of community, risk to self-confidence and the ability to discern true danger

What if a tree fell in the forest and no one knew it's biological name? Did it exist?