Top 35 Stewart Udall Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.”

— Stewart Udall

2. “If you want inner peace, find it in solitude, not speed, and if you would find yourself, look to the land from which you came and to which you go.”

— Stewart Udall

3. “Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.”

— Stewart Udall

4. “Mining is like a search-and-destroy mission.”

— Stewart Udall

5. “In a region with a growing population, if you’re doing nothing, you’re losing ground.”

— Stewart Udall

6. “The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth, and the Native American shared this elemental ethic: The land was alive to his loving touch, and he, its son, was brother to all creatures.”

— Stewart Udall

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

— Stewart Udall

8. “The National Park Service today exemplifies one of the highest traditions of public service.”

— Stewart Udall

9. “Where nature is concerned, familiarity breeds love and knowledge, not contempt.”

— Stewart Udall

10. “America today stands poised on a pinnacle of wealth and power, yet we live in a land of vanishing beauty, of increasing ugliness, of shrinking open space, and of an over-all environment that is diminished daily by pollution and noise and blight.”

— Stewart Udall

11. “Wilderness, like the national park system, was an American idea.”

— Stewart Udall

12. “The real story of the settlement of the West was work, not conquest.”

— Stewart Udall

13. “Each generation has its own rendezvous with the land, for despite our fee titles and claims of ownership, we are all brief tenants on this planet. By choice, or by default, we will carve out a land legacy for our heirs.”

— Stewart Udall

14. “I think the Colorado Plateau is the most scenic area in the world – let’s begin with that. Not just the United States.”

— Stewart Udall

15. “Gross National Product is our Holy Grail.”

— Stewart Udall

16. “Nuclear energy people perceive the greenhouse effect as a fresh wind blowing at their back.”

— Stewart Udall

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

— Stewart Udall

18. “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.”

— Stewart Udall

19. “Nixon was a good president on the environment. Gerald Ford was good.”

— Stewart Udall

20. “Utah today remains a battleground for land-use policies.”

— Stewart Udall

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

— Stewart Udall

22. “Admittedly, we must move ahead with the development of our land resources. Likewise, our technology must be refined. But in the long run life will succeed only in a life-giving environment, and we can no longer afford unnecessary sacrifices of living space and natural landscape to ‘progress.’”

— Stewart Udall

23. “Society as we know it is almost a conspiracy against human health. One of the main forces working to counteract that is the trailsman.”

— Stewart Udall

24. “Washington’s a cesspool of money.”

— Stewart Udall

25. “Nature will take precedence over the needs of the modern man.”

— Stewart Udall

26. “It induced us to conduct government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality.”

— Stewart Udall

27. “The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth.”

— Stewart Udall

28. “As the master politician navigates the ship of state, he both creates and responds to public opinion. Adept at tacking with the wind, he also succeeds, at times, in generating breezes of his own.”

— Stewart Udall

29. “It gives me satisfaction to help people.”

— Stewart Udall

30. “We’re all pretty individualistic.”

— Stewart Udall

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

— Stewart Udall

32. “It is obvious that the best qualities in man must atrophy in a standing-room-only environment.”

— Stewart Udall

33. “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. We cannot afford an America where expedience tramples upon esthetics and development decisions are made with an eye only on the present.”

— Stewart Udall

34. “A limit on the automobile population of the United States would be the best of news for our cities. The end of automania would save open spaces, encourage wiser land use, and contribute greatly to ending suburban sprawl.”

— Stewart Udall

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

— Stewart Udall

36. “I’m trying to encourage my children’s generation and the other ones coming to return to basic American principles.”

— Stewart Udall