National Parks System

Famous quotes containing the words national parks, national, parks and/or system:

    It is not unkind to say, from the standpoint of scenery alone, that if many, and indeed most, of our American national parks were to be set down on the continent of Europe thousands of Americans would journey all the way across the ocean in order to see their beauties.
    Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)

    Ignorance, forgetfulness, or contempt of the rights of man are the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments.
    —French National Assembly. Declaration of the Rights of Man (drafted and discussed Aug. 1789, published Sept. 1791)

    Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The human body is not a thing or substance, given, but a continuous creation. The human body is an energy system ... which is never a complete structure; never static; is in perpetual inner self-construction and self-destruction; we destroy in order to make it new.
    Norman O. Brown (b. 1913)