The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt And The Fire That Saved America Quotes
"There is nothing more practical in the end than the preservation of beauty."
"The forest reserves should be set apart forever for the use and benefit of our people as a whole and not sacrificed to the short-sighted greed of a few."
"The rights of the public to the national resources outweigh private rights."
"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity."
"It must not be forgotten that the forest reserves belong to all the people."
"Fire has always been, and seemingly will always remain, the most terrible of elements." - Harry Houdini
"The first duty of the human race is to control the earth it lives upon." - Gifford Pinchot
"I object to the law of the jungle." - Gifford Pinchot
"It is high time to realize that our responsibility to the coming millions is like that of parents to their children."
"There was no time to lose, and G.P. was sending his young men to ride the forests and mountains of all parts of the West."
"It was a wonderful thing to have a government bureau with nothing but young men in it."
"The earth, I repeat, belongs of right to all its people, and not to a minority, insignificant in numbers but tremendous in wealth and power."
"In God's sight, my Lady and I are husband and wife."
"I am against the man who skins the land!" - Teddy Roosevelt
"Storm after storm rolled out of the Gulf of Alaska, over the mountain hurdles in the western Pacific Northwest, and into the Bitterroots."
"The avalanche was loud enough that it shattered windows in a school hundreds of feet away."
"Pine needles and twigs on the floor cracked underfoot, dry as sun-crisped bread chips."
"Whenever the forest supervisors heard whistles in the woods they thought of showers of sparks trailing the trains."
"None of us had any idea how much of Jove's thunder there really was in you."
"I feel as if attending a funeral," one regional forester wrote of an upcoming meeting.
"The national forests 'are an expensive and useless burden to the public,' another paper wrote."
"Every morning in July 1910 dawned with smoke to chase."
"The residents of this city have less respect for the forest fire laws and are more trouble than any tourists."
"You can always tell a grand fir, growing into three centuries, by that Christmas tree fragrance."
"The newspapers attacked the Forest Service again."
"The present fires are the first severe test to which Mr. Roosevelt's green rangers have been put."
"The streets weren't paved with gold. Second, they weren't paved at all. And third, I was expected to pave them."
"How could he leave them? Yes, he was in charge of all these directionless lives in burning woods, these men from distant shores speaking languages he could not comprehend, but wasn't his first duty to his family?"
"Fire fighting is perhaps the nearest thing there is to war, and always requires extreme physical exertion, long hours, lack of sleep, and constant nervous attention."
"Instead of readying for retreat or defense, instead of digging fire lines or packing clothes and belongings, the people of Taft went to work hoarding and then consuming their entire whiskey supply."
"A weather system can form benign and transform into something ferocious long after it has left the cradle of its creation."
"He raced down the dirt roadway, running two miles through the heat and thick smoke."
"The realization was too much for one man; he reared up out of a crouch, taking quick steps toward the light, stepping over men lying face-down."
"The fire took the hot floor of the simmering forest and threw it into the air, where it lit the boughs of bigger ponderosas and white pines."
"In pops and cracks and snaps and gulps, in gasps and whistles, the fire metastasized—more clamorous with every fresh intake, charging ahead."
"The train whistles were screaming, the heavy boom of falling trees and buildings, the crackle of the fire."
"If you're going to ride horses with me and go to the places I go, you're going to ride horses like men."
"It is a good thing for us to remember at this time that nearly all or quite all of the loss, suffering and death the fires have caused was wholly unnecessary."
"The United States has just ended its latest war, the fiercest forest fire in the history of the country."
"The forest fires, their conduct is beyond all praise."
"I believe that the natural resources must be used for the benefit of all the people, and not monopolized for the benefit of a few."
"For the want of a nail, the shoe was cast, the rider thrown, the battle lost."
"The presence of thousands of men in the forest whose principal industry is to establish the necessity for their employment will always constitute a menace to the forest."
"The time has come for a halt in general rhapsodies over conservation."
"While Mr. Pulaski's act is commendable, from the facts you gave it does not appear that he did anything more than was necessary to save his own life."
"Edward Pulaski did risk his own life voluntarily to save the lives of fellow human beings."
"Do you think I would have stayed there when I knew my home and family was in more or less danger, if I did not realize that there were men being killed and that I might help them by staying at the same time staking my own life to help them?"
"I did think that U. Sam might have taken notice of me and sent me a leather medal. To show me that men put to the test are not forgotten."
"Not a clear day," he wrote after his first night in the sanitarium.
"My hat is in the ring. The fight is on, and I am stripped to the buff."
"Among the many, many public officials who under my administration rendered literally invaluable service to the people of the United States, he on the whole stood first."
"His personal story of heroism on August 20 became the saga on which the future of the United States Forest Service was built."
"Do you have any idea how many potatoes men eat?"
"His name lives on; to this day, there is hardly a firefighter among the millions of men and women who have fought flames in the woods who is unfamiliar with the Pulaski."
"Conservation to Gifford Pinchot was never a vague, fuzzy aspiration. It was concrete, exact, dynamic."
"I am a forester all the time—have been, and shall be, all my working life."
"One of the great days of my life. I think the greatest sight I ever saw."