National Park Quotes & Sayings

We take too much of our heritage for granted. Harriman State Park is not Mt. Vernon. Nor is it Yosemite. But heritage cannot be measured on a scale... — Mary E. Reed

Crater Lake is a caldera lake in the western United States, located in south-central Oregon. It is the main
feature of Crater Lake National Park and is famous for its deep blue color and water clarity. The lake
partly fills a nearly — Vishwa Nayak

I do have spare time and I love to read, and I love just to go to a national park and just relax and just think. But most of the time, it's swimming or talking. — Lewis Pugh

How to pry the tourists out of their automobiles, out of their back-breaking upholstered mechanized wheelchairs and onto their feet, onto the strange warmth and solidity of Mother Earth again? This is the problem which the Park Service should confront directly, not evasively, and which it cannot resolve by simply submitting and conforming to the automobile habit. — Edward Abbey

If you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you'll get some appreciation for the scale and beauty of the outdoors. When you walk into it, then you see it in a completely different way. You discover it in a much slower, more majestic sort of way. — Bill Bryson

Without the support of local people, you might as well give up because you can make all the noise you like, you can demarcate a national park, but if the people outside want to go creeping into a forest you really can't stop them. They've got to get a benefit. — Jane Goodall

So when people go to the park this summer, they are not going to have the same quality of a visit. There is not going to be a ranger out on the trail to tell them about the important cultural and historic areas within the Olympic National Park. — Norm Dicks

National partition is a sorrow that touches all Koreans, but for me it is brought to the fore by unimaginable personal suffering. — Park Geun-hye

Do we allow unlimited visitation, or do we restrict numbers to protect a delicate ecosystem? Do we heavily advertise the park, enticing paying visitors, generating needed money for Idaho's park department, or do we sacrifice financial benefits to better preserve natural ones? Do we log diseased trees, interfering with nature, or do we allow trees to rot and fall, possibly endangering lives? Do we inexpensively repair historic structures, or do we meticulously restore them? Do we maintain this park as closely as possible to the condition in which Idaho received it, or do we develop it for multiple uses; allow overnight visitors; permit all-terrain vehicles; provide paths for those unable to navigate unpaved trails? — Mary E. Reed

The problem is that after two centuries of conflict about just who was wanted in the Australian nation the term 'Australia' both includes and excludes. There are still people for whom 'Australian' means predominatly Anglo-Celtic white people whose parents were born here before 'New Australians' came as migrants after the Second World War. A common alternative to 'white people' (who from an Aboriginal perspective might be more genially called 'whitefellas') is 'Europeans'. This makes an incongruous appeal to history. Politically the colonisers were British, but they includes people of many nationalities. It's an odd usage, as when you see a sign in a national park telling you 'Europeans' brought the invasive weeds and pests. They brought the sign and the concept of a park too, and 'they', in a complex sense, are 'us'. — Nicholas Jose

The prediction that glaciers will be gone from Glacier National Park has been moved up by 10 years to 2020, the same year it's predicted the Arctic Sea will be ice-free in the summer. — Bill Kurtis

Skyscraper National Park — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

We need fundamental change. In the past, national development led to people's happiness but now the link between national growth and improvement in people's lives has been severed. — Park Geun-hye

He knew he could never jingle change in his pocket or park his car like a confident adult, he was the Adrian he had always been, casting a guilty look over a furtive shoulder, living in eternal dread of a grown-up striding forward to clip his ear.
But there again, when he sipped at the whiskey his eyes failed to water and his throat forgot to burn. The body shamelessly welcomed what once it would have rejected. At breakfast he demanded not Ricicles and chocolate spread, but coffee and unbuttered toast. And if the coffee was sugared he leapt from it like a colt from an electric fence. He ate the crust and left the filling, guzzled the olives and spurned the cherries. Yet inside he remained the same Adrian who fought down the urge to stand and shout 'Bullocks' during church services, smelt his own farts and wasted hours skimming through National Geographic on the off-chance of seeing a few naked bodies. — Stephen Fry

After studying in Sheffield, I went down to London to do my post-graduate degree at the National Film and Television School, embarking on the movie that would eventually become 'A Grand Day Out.' — Nick Park

I have family in Tanzania. I can't even explain the joy of riding through the Tanzania national park and seeing giraffes run across the road and elephants over in a pond and baboons running. — Emanuel Cleaver

Maybe our best family trip started at Victoria Falls, which drenches you with spray and is so vast that it makes Niagara Falls seem like a backyard creek. Then we rented a car and made our way to Hwange National Park, which was empty of people but crowded with zebras, giraffes, elephants and more. — Nicholas Kristof

It's the one species I wouldn't mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth. I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males. — Alan Bennett

I will open an era of grand national unity. — Park Geun-hye

Since joining the National Park Service fourteen years ago, Anna had worked every Fourth of July ... Winding her way through the masses, trying not to get her fragile frame jostled, she realized she preferred it that way. Working on holidays, one wasn't required to have fun. There was no pressure, no disappointments. And she usually had a wonderful time. — Nevada Barr

I believe the National Park Service has demonstrated strong partnerships geared towards respecting the private property of citizens in its administering of the current Trail of Tears National Historic Trail and will continue to do so upon the addition of the routes. — Zach Wamp

There was always a slight upswing in February, the town's coldest month, when out-of-towners liked to hike into the national park to see the famous waterfalls when they rose, like bridal veils, against the mountains. But mostly, from December to April, those who made their living off tourists just suffered through, dreaming of warmer months, of kingfisher-blue skies and leaves so green they looked like they'd just been painted, as if the color would smear if you touched it. — Sarah Addison Allen

Shenandoah National Park is lovely. It is possibly the most wonderful national park I have ever been in, and, considering the impossible and conflicting demands put on it, it is extremely well run. Almost at once it became my favorite part of the Appalachian Trail. — Bill Bryson

An individualist town councillor will walk along the municipal pavement, lit by municipal gas and cleansed by municipal brooms with municipal water and - seeing by the municipal clock in the municipal market, that he is too early to meet his children coming from the municipal school, hard by the country lunatic asylum and the municipal hospital, will use the national telegraph system to tell them not to walk through the municipal park, but to come by the municipal tramway to meet him in the municipal reading-room, by the municipal museum, art-gallery, and library, where he intends ... to prepare his next speech in the municipal town hall in favor of the nationalization of canals and in increase of Government control of the railway system. "Socialism, Sir," he will say, "don't waste the time of a practical man by your fantastic absurdities. Self-help, Sir, individual self-help, that's what has made our city what it is. — Sidney Webb

Although biodiversity loss continues globally, many countries are significantly slowing the rate of loss by shoring up protected natural areas and the services they provide, and in expanding national park systems with tighter management and more secure funding. — Helen Clark

Typically, an historic site is considered by the National Park Service to contain a single historical feature, while generally a National Historic Park extends beyond single properties or buildings. — Rick Renzi

I grew up on the edge of a national park in Canada - timberwolves, creeks, snow drifts. I really did have to walk home six miles through the snow, like your grandparents used to complain. — Dan Aykroyd

It was vowed that there would never be a charge made for entering said Park. It was a gentleman's agreement. But most of the gentlemen eventually died. — Jacob Clifford Moomaw

The National Park Service today exemplifies one of the highest traditions of public service. — Stewart Udall

Yellowstone, of all the national parks, is the wildest and most universal in its appeal... Daily new, always strange, ever full of change, it is Nature's wonder park. It is the most human and the most popular of all parks. -Yellowstone Park for Your Vacation (circa 1920s) — Susan Rugh

The national park idea has been nurtured by each succeeding generation of Americans. Today, across our land, the National Park System represents America at its best. Each park contributes to a deeper understanding of the history of the United States and our way of life; of the natural processes which have given form to our land, and to the enrichment of the environment in which we live. — George B. Hartzog Jr.

As a kid, I was pretty obsessed with dinosaurs and the day that my parents took me to Dinosaur National Park, I didn't think life could get any better. — Chelsea Clinton

If the national park is, as Lord Bryce suggested, the best idea America has ever had, wilderness preservation is the highest refinement of that idea, — Wallace Stegner

In terms of economical aspects, reinforcing those national parks with sophisticated anti-poaching patrols - these poachers are beefed up like the army. In the case of Cameroon, that's a perfect example of the lack of finance. The government could not provide the national park with more guards. Therefore, they lost the majority of the elephant population. I don't want to see that anywhere else. — Veronika Varekova

One August morning at Blair House, he read in the papers that the body of an American soldier killed in action, Sergeant John Rice, had been brought home for burial in Sioux City, Iowa, but that at the last moment, as the casket was to be lowered into the grave, officials of the Sioux City Memorial Park had stopped the ceremony because Sergeant Rice, a Winnebago Indian, was not "a member of the Caucasian race" and burial was therefore denied. Outraged, Truman picked up the phone. Within minutes, by telephone and telegram, it was arranged that Sergeant Rice would be buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors and that an Air Force plane was on the way to bring his widow and three children to Washington. That, as President, was the least he could do. — David McCullough

American Casualties on the USS Maine

Two hundred & Sixty Six American sailors were killed when the American battleship, USS Maine, exploded and sank in Havana harbor after a massive explosion of undetermined origin. The first Board of Inquiry regarding the incident stated that a mine placed on or near the hull had sunk the ship. Later studies determined that it was more likely heat from smoldering coal in the ship's bunker that set off the explosion in an adjoining ammunition locker.

In February 1898, the recovered bodies of the American sailors who died on the battleship were interred in the Colon Cemetery, in Havana. Nearly two years later they were exhumed and now 163 of the crew that were killed in 1898 are buried at Arlington National Cemetery, near the USS Maine Memorial.

The beautiful monument shown is located in Central Park West in New York City. — Hank Bracker

The alienation, the downright visceral frustration, of the new American ideologues, the bone in their craw, is the unacknowledged fact that America has never been an especially capitalist country. The postal system, the land grant provision for public education, the national park system, the Homestead Act, the graduated income tax, the Social Security system, the G.I. Bill
all of these were and are massive distributions or redistributions of wealth meant to benefit the population at large. — Marilynne Robinson

9:12 P.M. - GROUND ZERO, WASHINGTON, D.C. Without warning, the capital of the United States was obliterated. At precisely 9:12 p.m. Eastern, in a millisecond of time, in a blinding flash of light, the White House simply ceased to exist, as did everything and everyone else for miles in every direction. No sooner had the first missile detonated in Lafayette Park than temperatures soared into the millions of degrees. The firestorm and blast wave that followed consumed everything in its path. Gone was the Treasury building, and with it the headquarters of the United States Secret Service. Gone was the FBI building, and the National Archives, and the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Capitol and all of its surrounding buildings. Wiped away was every monument, every museum, every restaurant, every hotel, every hospital, every library and landmark of any kind, every sign of civilization. — Joel C. Rosenberg

The central part of the state is more remote and less scenic, and there's a huge agricultural belt that stretches from the south of Lake Okeechobee to the border of Everglades National Park, where the restoration effort is being concentrated, .. Obviously the movement to save the Everglades runs up against agricultural concerns. — Carl Hiaasen

Wilderness, like the national park system, was an American idea. — Stewart Udall

Bart Giamatti did not grow up (as he had dreamed) to play second base for the Red Sox. He became a professor at Yale, and then, in time president of the National Baseball League. He never lost his love for the Boston Red Sox. It was as a Red Sox fan, he later realized that human beings are fallen, and that life is filled with disappointment. The path to comprehending Calvinism in modern America, he decided, begins at Fenway Park. — David Halberstam

Standing there, gaping at this monstrous and inhumane spectacle of rock and cloud and sky and space, I feel a ridiculous greed and possessiveness come over me. I want to know it all, posess it all, embrace the entire scene intimately, deeply, totally ... — Edward Abbey

She smiled at his flirtations. "Have I ever told you how incorrigible you are?"
He chuckled. "Several times. But I do have some redeemable qualities. Don't you think?"
She kissed him lightly on the lips. "You sure do."
"Name one."
"Well!" Amelia tapped her forehead as if to think. Do you mean besides being so irresponsible that it drives me crazy? Well, I have to say that you're not bad to look at. That why I keep you around."
A smile was playing at the corners of Rick's lips and a mischievous glint appeared in his eyes. Without warning, he pulled her into his arms and gave a kiss to remember. — Linda Weaver Clarke

I was staying at the Konchucos Tambo lodge, next to the Huascaran national park, near Chavin. Sitting here on its veranda, I was beginning to see where all those Latin American magical realists get their inspiration from: they don't need to make anything up; they just write down what's around them. — Mark Barrowcliffe

I got to Africa. I got the opportunity to go and learn, not about any animal, but chimpanzees. I was living in my dream world, the forest in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. It was Tanganyika when I began. — Jane Goodall

She knew her mother was likely to blow her top like a geyser in Yosemite National Park, but Mary had stopped giving a damn one way or another. — William Mann

The name Mary Jo Quinn was written neatly in faded blue marker on the front of the scrapbook, its gray edges frayed with age and wear, as though it had been handled often. Such a memento was a strange thing to find in a used bookstore, especially when one considered its contents. I'd discovered the handmade tome buried on the bottom shelf on the back wall of a little musty-smelling shop in the tiny resort town of Copper Harbor. This picturesque community is the gateway to Isle Royale National Park, an island in the western quarter of Lake Superior that beckoned to hikers, kayakers and canoers. Copper Harbor is the northern-most bastion of civilization in Michigan on a crooked finger of land called the Keweenaw Peninsula. Its remote, pristine shoreline provided an excellent respite from a hellacious year for my best friend from high school and me on a late September weekend. — Nancy Barr

Even though the National Guard and Army Reserve see combat today, it rankles me that people assume it was some kind of waltz in the park back then. — Larry David

The spectacular incident of the stones serves as a kind of red herring in this respect. Many researchers have adopted the erroneous belief that where there has been one incident, there must be others. To offer another analogy, this is like dispatching a crew of meteor watchers to Crater National Park because a huge asteroid struck there two million years ago. — Stephen King

What I want to do with my filmmaking is help kids experience the truth and wisdom of nature no matter where they are, whether or not they have the opportunity to go to a national park. — Louie Schwartzberg

I think every child in every country, not just South Africa, every year should go to a national park, and it should be part of their basic curriculum. — Lewis Pugh

I got involved in Gateway National Park and just became fascinated with gardens. — Alexandra Kerry

A cluster of yachts was anchored at the far side, and a smaller boat with a National Park Service logo on the side was tied at the dock. We slowed, turned, and slid in next to it. I — Jeff Lindsay

country without wolves isn't really good country. It's incomplete. It doesn't have its full spirit. — Doug Smith

Biodiversity can't be maintained by protecting a few species in a zoo, or by preserving greenbelts or national parks. To function properly, nature needs more room than that. It can maintain itself, however, without human expense, without zookeepers, park rangers, foresters or gene banks. All it needs is to be left alone. — Donella Meadows

Our public lands - whether a national park or monument, wildlife refuge, forest or prairie - make each one of us land-rich. It is our inheritance as citizens of a country called America. — Terry Tempest Williams

Let us consider Elfland as a great national park, a vast and beautiful place where a person goes by himself, on foot, to get in touch with reality in a special, private, profound fashion. But what happens when it is considered merely as a place to "get away to"?
Well, you know what has happened to Yosemite. Everybody comes, not with an ax and a box of matches, but in a trailer with a motorbike on the back and a motorboat on top and a butane stove, five aluminum folding chairs, and a transistor radio on the inside. They arrive totally encapsulated in a secondhand reality. And then they move on to Yellowstone, and it's just the same there, all trailers and transistors. They go from park to park, but they never really go anywhere; except when one of them who thinks that even the wildlife isn't real gets chewed up by a genuine, firsthand bear.
The same sort of thing seems to be happening to Elfland, lately. — Ursula K. Le Guin

London is not a city, London is a person. Tower Bridge talks to you; National Gallery reads a poem for you; Hyde Park dances with you; Palace of Westminster plays the piano; Big Ben and St Paul's Cathedral sing an opera! London is not a city; it is a talented artist who is ready to contact with you directly! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

If you're Maasai Mara National Park in Kenya, if you're in Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, you don't get out of your vehicle and go walking around amid the lions and the leopards. You stay in your Land Rover. You stay in your safari van, and you look out the windows or you look out the pop top at these animals. I know by experience how badly that can work out if you violate those guidelines. — David Quammen

Yellowstone, a place so special and awe-inspiring that after exploring it in 1871, the Hayden Expedition conceived of the original concept of the world's first national park - a set-aside of 2. 2 million acres containing more than ten thousand thermal features, canyons, waterfalls, and wildlife - so no man or corporation could ever own it. — C.J. Box

The park lies directly downwind from a slew of coal plants. Virtually all of the major contaminants in the local air and water are direct results of coal emissions. Coal produces ozone, which kills trees. Coal produces sulfates, which kill fish. No other park in the country has more ozone or sulfates than Shenandoah National Park. — Wil S. Hylton

Safeco Field is a lot like a National League park. Because of that, we're more of a pitching-defensive type club. Anaheim and Oakland - and even Texas - are more offensive oriented. We're a club that doesn't blow anybody out, but at the same time we don't get blown out much. We're in most of the games. — Pat Gillick

The National Park Service shot a mule in the face. He survived but had trouble swallowing and often food came out of his nose. — Cleveland Amory

Under the snowcapped mountains of Fiordland National Park, freshwater streams empty into the saltwater fiords, creating a unique ecosystem. This is a heavily wooded park, so the water in the streams is stained with tannin, a substance found in plants that makes clean water seem dirty, though it isn't. — Brian Skerry

The establishment of the National Park Service is justified by considerations of good administration, of the value of natural beauty as a National asset, and of the effectiveness of outdoor life and recreation in the production of good citizenship. — Theodore Roosevelt

My relationship with the mountains actually started when I was 16. Every year, a group used to be taken from Auckland Grammar down to the Tangariro National Park for a skiing holiday. — Edmund Hillary

The National Park Service actually has something of a tradition of making things extinct. — Bill Bryson

In Yellowstone National Park, there are more 'do not feed the animals' signs than there are animals you might wish to feed. — Natalie Jeremijenko

It's good to see so many friends here in the Rose Garden. This is our first event in this beautiful spot, and it's appropriate we talk about policy that will affect people's lives in a positive way in such a beautiful, beautiful part of our national - really, our national park system, my guess is you would want to call it. — George W. Bush

At dusk in the Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica, Melissa Overton barely heard the constant sound of crickets chirping all around them. Prowling through the dense, tropical rainforest as a jaguar, she listened for the human voices that would clue her in that her prey was nearby.
Waves crashed onto the sandy beaches in the distance as she made her way quietly, like a phantom predator, through the tangle of vines and broad, leafy foliage, searching for any sign of the poachers. Humans wouldn't have a clue as to what she and her kind were when they saw her - apparently nothing other than an ordinary jaguar. And she and her fellow jaguar shifters planned to keep it that way.
Her partner on this mission, JAG agent Huntley Anderson, was nearby, just as wary and observant. The JAG Special Forces Branch, also known as the Golden Claws, was only open to jaguar shifters and served to protect both their shifter kind and their jaguar cousins.... — Terry Spear

The decay of the late, great country of South Africa is beginning to become apparent. The name of the Transvaal has been officially changed to 'Gauteng.' (One of our friends has suggested that in view of this its inhabitants in the future should be referred to as Oranggautengs.) ... And now there is a move afoot to wreck the Kruger National Park, one of the wonders of the world, on the notion that a good bit of its land was 'taken from the blacks.' This idea is somewhat akin to giving Yellowstone Park back to the Blackfeet. — Jeff Cooper

This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly, because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under which it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has "deregulated" the airline industry. What this means for you, the consumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow any rules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge for oxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine Refill Person School. — Dave Barry

He was skinning a bear. I was terrified at first, because the corpse resembled a naked man quartered between two trees. He'd created a deadfall trap over some big talus blocks and the bear had fallen in. He used the skin for something and jerked the meat. If it wasn't astonishing enough behavior in a national park, the next day he made donuts, using bear fat for grease ! Surely, by now, he's created an empire somewhere in the world ... — Dave Cook

I've been through legislation creating a dozen national parks, and there's always the same pattern. When you first propose a park, and you visit the area and present the case to the local people, they threaten to hang you. You go back in five years and they think it's the greatest thing that ever happened. — Mo Udall

At the Ahwahnee Lodge in Yosemite National Park. Built in the 1920s, the Ahwahnee is a sprawling pile of stone, concrete, and timber designed in a style that mixed Art Deco, the Arts and Crafts movement, — Walter Isaacson

Antarctica is one of the most remote and beautiful places on earth. I don't think that everyone should go there. I also think that we need to respect it as a kind of a national park for the planet. It should be you know put in parentheses. — DJ Spooky

For it is my opinion that we enclose and celebrate the freaks of our nation and our civilization. Yellowstone National Park is no more representative of America than is Disneyland. — John Steinbeck

I spent my summers at my grandparents' cabin in Estes Park, literally next door to Rocky Mountain National Park. We had a view of Longs Peak across the valley and the giant rock beaver who, my granddad told me, was forever climbing toward the summit of the mountain. We awoke to mule deer peering in the windows and hummingbirds buzzing around the red-trimmed feeders; spent the days chasing chipmunks across the boulders of Deer Mountain and the nights listening to coyotes howling in the dark. — Mary Taylor Young

In fact, at Olympic National Park in my district, they 3 years ago had 130 summer employees they brought in for temporary work. This summer they have 25 because they cannot afford more. — Norm Dicks

Whatever the cost, however financed, the benefits for park visitors in health and happiness
virtues unknown to statisticians
would be immeasurable. — Edward Abbey

On the lip of the Grand Canyon. I've always wanted to do that. My very first TV special out of the Olympics was on a glacier in Alaska. Right after that one, I went and pitched this idea to skate in three National Parks. Like Voyageurs National Park, because it freezes over and you have these little islands that you can skate around. [The networks] were like, 'Way too expensive.' — Brian Boitano

There was a very important superintendent of Yellowstone, a man who was involved in the founding of the National Park Service itself, Horace Albright. And he became superintendent, which is the boss of Yellowstone Park, in 1919 - from 1919 to 1929. Later, he was director of the park service itself. Albright embraced the idea that in order for the national parks - and Yellowstone in particular - to have support from the American people and from politicians, there needed to be wildlife as spectacle. — David Quammen

Glaciers are almost gone from Glacier National Park. — Donella Meadows

I think, too, that we've got to recognize that where the preservation of a natural resource like the redwoods is concerned, that there is a common sense limit. I mean, if you've looked at a hundred thousand acres or so of trees-you know, a tree is a tree, how many more do you need to look at?
Opposing expansion of Redwood National Park. — Ronald Reagan

I haven't been to Tasmania. I haven't been to the South Pole, and I haven't been to the North Pole. I want to see the polar bear migration before there are no polar bears. I want to see Glacier National Park before the glacier melts. — Martha Stewart

The making of the far-famed New York Central Park was opposed by even good men, with misguided pluck, perseverance, and ingenuity, but straight right won its way, and now that park is appreciated. So we confidently believe it will be with our great national parks and forest reservations. — John Muir

The national park is the best idea America ever had. — James Bryce

Television was supposed to be a national park. Instead it has become a money machine. It's a commodity now, just like pork bellies. — Fred W. Friendly

At the foot of the mountain, the park ended and suddenly all was squalor again. I was once more struck by this strange compartmentalization that goes on in America
a belief that no commercial activities must be allowed inside the park, but permitting unrestrained development outside, even though the landscape there may be just as outstanding. America has never quite grasped that you can live in a place without making it ugly, that beauty doesn't have to be confined behind fences, as if a national park were a sort of zoo for nature. — Bill Bryson

Molly grabbed a vase off the mantel and flung it at the wall, knocking it into a painting of a mountain scene. The vase shattered and the picture frame swayed back and forth on the wall, taunting her with an image of what life was supposed to be like. . . — Susan Rose