GIFFORD PINCHOT

The outgrowth of conservation, the inevitable result, is national efficiency.

The vast possibilities of our great future will become realities only if we make ourselves responsible for that future.

World-wide practice of Conservation and the fair and continued access by all nations to the resources they need are the two indispensable foundations of continuous plenty and of permanent peace.

Innovations never happen as planned.

The earth and its resources belong of right to its people.

Unless we practice conservation, those who come after us will have to pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure for the progress and prosperity of our day.

Conservation means the wise use of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men.

The purpose of the Conservation movement is to make our country a permanent and prosperous home for ourselves, and for our children, and for our children’s children.

The struggle over waterpower is simply another chapter in the everlasting conflict between “the few” and “the many” …. I stand for the Roosevelt policies because they set the common good of all of us against the private gain of some of us.

I ran into the gigantic and gigantically wasteful lumbering of great Sequoias, many of whose trunks were so huge they had to be blown apart before they could be handled. I resented then, and I still resent, the practice of making vine stakes hardly bigger than walking sticks out of these greatest of living things.

I have been governor every now and then, but I am a forester all the time.

It is a greater thing to be a good citizen than to be a good Republican or a good Democrat.

Conservation is the application of common sense to the common problems for the common good.

I had no more conception of what it meant to be a forester than the man in the moon....But at least a forester worked in the woods and with the woods - and I loved the woods and everything about them....My Father's suggestion settled the question in favor of forestry.

The American Colossus was fiercely intent on appropriating and exploiting the riches of all continents - grasping with both hands, reaping where he had not sown, wasting what he thought would last forever. New railroads were opening new territory. The exploiters were pushing farther and farther into the wilderness. The man who could get his hands on the biggest slice of natural resources was the best citizen. Wealth and virtue were supposed to trot in double harness.

In the old world that is passing, in the new world that is coming, national efficiency has been and will be a controlling factor in national safety and welfare

Without natural resources life itself is impossible. From birth to death, natural resources, transformed for human use, feed, clothe, shelter, and transport us. Upon them we depend for every material necessity, comfort, convenience, and protection in our lives. Without abundant resources prosperity is out of reach.