“[I]t is the writer's duty to write fiction which promotes virtue, the good, the beautiful, and above all, the true. ... It is the writer's duty to hate injustice, to defy the powerful, and to speak for the voiceless. To be ... the severest critics of our own societies.”

“You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light.”

“To the question: Wilderness, who needs it? Doc would say: Because we like the taste of freedom, comrades. Because we like the smell of danger. But, thought Hayduke, what about the smell of fear, Dad?”

“One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.”

“Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.”

“There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.”

“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.”

“For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!”

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”

“Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.”

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”