With a year's worth of publicity finally culminating this week with The National Parks: America's Best Idea, it seems fitting to look back at some of the poignant statements made in connection with the national parks down through the years.

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but nature's sources never fail. -- John Muir, in Our National Parks

None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild. - John Muir, Our National Parks

“The main thing is the whole thing. Which is why it seems to me that although Glacier lacks a logo-like defining attraction, it perhaps better than any other place defines the general purpose and value of our National Park System...a monument to the underlying forces of nature, not to the unusual features of it.” -- Bill Gilbert, Glacier National Park: An American Place, Life Magazine, September 1993

"It is fortunate indeed that the forest service started with a distinct professional leadership and this was possible because European forestry was highly developed. But the idea of wild or wilderness national parks is a distinctly American idea and did not have a European tradition. The European tradition is about formal park design rather than large wild parks, such as our national parks. For this reason we must develop our own policies for the parks...." -- Biologist Charles C. Adams, in Ecological Conditions in National Forests and in National Parks, The Scientific Monthly, June 1925.

Far away in Montana, hidden from view by clustering mountain-peaks, lies an unmapped northwestern corner- the Crown of the Continent. The water from the crusted snowdrift which caps the peak of a lofty mountain there trickles into tiny rills, which hurry along north, south, east and west, and growing to rivers, at last pour their currents into three seas. From this mountain-peak the Pacific and the Arctic oceans and the Gulf of Mexico receive each its tribute. Here is a land of striking scenery. -- George Bird Grinnell, The Century Magazine, 1901

“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.

“There is nothing so American as our national parks.... The fundamental idea behind the parks...is that the country belongs to the people,that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us.” -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

“National parks and reserves are an integral aspect of intelligent use of natural resources. It is the course of wisdom to set aside an ample portion of our natural resources as national parks and reserves, thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as we know it today.” -- John F. Kennedy, World Conference on National Parks, June 23, 1962

“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, The Outlook

“Old Man (Napi) came from the south, making the mountains, the prairies, and the forests as he passed along, making the birds and animals also. He traveled northward making things as he went, putting red paint in the ground here and there -arranging the world as we see it today.” -- Blackfeet Creation Legend

"The parks do not belong to one state or to one section.... The Yosemite, the Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon are national properties in which every citizen has a vested interest; they belong as much to the man of Massachusetts, of Michigan, of Florida, as they do to the people of California, of Wyoming, and of Arizona."

"Who will gainsay that the parks contain the highest potentialities of national pride, national contentment, and national health? A visit inspires love of country; begets contentment; engenders pride of possession; contains the antidote for national restlessness.... He is a better citizen with a keener appreciation of the privilege of living here who has toured the national parks." -- Stephen T. Mather, NPS Director, 1917-1929

"The American way of life consists of something that goes greatly beyond the mere obtaining of the necessities of existence. If it means anything, it means that America presents to its citizens an opportunity to grow mentally and spiritually, as well as physically. The National Park System and the work of the National Park Service constitute one of the Federal Government's important contributions to that opportunity. Together they make it possible for all Americans--millions of them at first-hand--to enjoy unspoiled the great scenic places of the Nation.... The National Park System also provides, through areas that are significant in history and prehistory, a physical as well as spiritual linking of present-day Americans with the past of their country." -- Newton B. Drury, NPS Director, 1940-1951

"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., NPS Director, 1964-1972

"As we Americans celebrate our diversity, so we must affirm our unity if we are to remain the 'one nation' to which we pledge allegiance. Such great national symbols and meccas as the Liberty Bell, the battlefields on which our independence was won and our union preserved, the Lincoln Memorial, the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and numerous other treasures of our national park system belong to all of us, both legally and spiritually. These tangible evidences of our cultural and natural heritage help make us all Americans." -- Edwin C. Bearss, NPS Chief Historian, 1981-1994

"The parks are the Nation's pleasure grounds and the Nation's restoring places.... The national parks...are an American idea; it is one thing we have that has not been imported." -- J. Horace McFarland, president, American Civic Assn., 1916

"There is nothing so American as our national parks.... The fundamental idea behind the parks...is that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us." -- President Franklin D. Roosevelt

"National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst." -- Wallace Stegner, 1983

"But our national heritage is richer than just scenic features; the realization is coming that perhaps our greatest national heritage is nature itself, with all its complexity and its abundance of life, which, when combined with great scenic beauty as it is in the national parks, becomes of unlimited value. This is what we would attain in the national parks." -- George M. Wright, Joseph S. Dixon, and Ben H. Thompson, Fauna of the National Parks of the United States, 1933

"I have always thought of our Service as an institution, more than any other bureau, engaged in a field essentially of morality--the aim of man to rise above himself, and to choose the option of quality rather than material superfluity." -- Freeman Tilden to George B. Hartzog, Jr., ca. 1971

"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, in The Outlook, February 3, 1912

"It is the will of the nation as embodied in the act of Congress [in setting aside the Yosemite government reservation in 1864] that this scenery shall never be private property, but that like certain defensive points upon our coast it shall be solely for public purposes.

Two classes of considerations may be assumed to have influenced the action of Congress. The first and less important is the direct and obvious pecuniary advantage which comes to a commonwealth from the fact that it possesses objects which cannot be taken out of its domain, that are attractive to travellers and the enjoyment of which is open to all.

A more important class of considerations, however, remains to be stated. These are considerations of a political duty of grave importance to which seldom if ever before has proper respect been paid by any government in the world but the grounds of which rest on the same eternal base of equity and benevolence with all other duties of republican government. It is the main duty of government, if it is not the sole duty of government, to provide means of protection for all its citizens in the pursuit of happiness against all the obstacles, otherwise insurmountable, which the selfishness of individuals or combinations of individuals is liable to interpose to that pursuit." -- Frederick Law Olmsted, The Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Trees, (1865)

"As Olmsted [FLO, Sr.] demonstrated, the question in a democratic society is not the acceptance or rejection of what the people want. People get the recreation that imaginative leadership gives them.... The essence of recreational policy in a democratic society, he believed, was the willingness to treat the ordinary citizen as something other than a passive customer to be managed and entertained. Olmsted based his theory of recreation on what he called "a faith in the refinement of the republic," a faith in the possibility of liberation from self-interested manipulation." -- Joseph L. Sax, America's National Parks: Their Principles, Purposes, and Prospects, Natural History, Supplement, October 1976

"The primary duty of the National Park Service is to protect the national parks and national monuments under its jurisdiction and keep them as nearly in their natural state as this can be done in view of the fact that access to them must be provided in order that they may be used and enjoyed. All other activities of the bureau must be secondary (but not incidental) to this fundamental function relating to care and protection of all areas subject to its control." -- Stephen Mather, internal document, February 1925