“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in--an interesting hole I find myself in--fits me rather neatly, doesn't it...”

“So the hours are pretty good then?' he resumed.The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky depths.Yeah,' he said, 'but now you come to mention it, most of the actua...”

“I'd far rather be happy than right any day.”

“This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of th...”

“There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wr...”

“And then, just when you think that you have experienced all the wonders that this world has to offer, you round a peak and suddenly think you're doing the whole thing over again, but this time on d...”

“A dam is monumentally static; it tries to bring a river under control, to regulate its seasonal pattern of floods and low flow.”

“Underlying many aspects of water development is a myth: the myth that we must have more.”

“What do you consider the most interesting man-made structure in the galaxy?The dam they are building at the Three Gorges on the Yangtse. Though perhaps 'baffling' would be a better word. Dams almos...”

“I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.”

“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wi...”

“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 ...”