William O. Douglas

William O. Douglas was a law professor at Yale; Chairman of the Securities and ExchangCommission., then served as associate justice of the U. S. Supreme Court for more than 36 years. He was a staunch supporter of conservation andthe environment and is still remembered by a lucky few who accompanied him on hikes along the Appalachian Trail and other scenic places.

A conservation park is not a playground. It is not an amusement center. The Disneyland approach is at war with the idea of conservation parks. Those who want to play tennis or basketball or practice on bars need a gymnasium or a stadium . . . The conservation park should return man to the environment from which he came. A Wilderness Bill of Rights, 1965.

We who come this way are merely short-term tenants. Ibid.

We need networks of trails out of our metropolitan areas where people can hike and cyclists can ride. Ibid.

(The Mississippi), once a proud and majestic concourse . . . drains the interior United States from western New York to western Montana; and it collects sewage, garbage, and industrial wastes all the way. St. Louis and East St. Louis alone pour into the river 300 million gallons of sewage a day, containing 460 tons of solids and 165 tons of ground garbage. The river gets oils, phenols, gasoline, ammonia, and toxic metals; hospital refuse and discharges from mortician centers; acids from mines, cyanide, chicken feathers, offal from slaughterhouses; hot water from power plants and refineries. Ibid.

We look to the heavens for help and uplift, but it is to the earth we are chained; it is from the earth that we must find our sustenance; it is on the earth that we must find solutions to the problems that promise to destroy all life here. My Wild Wilderness: The Pacific West, 1960.

Turning the other cheek, the wolf teaches us, is not abject surrender but an honorable way to prevent a fight and save the species. Ibid.

We look to the heavens for help and uplift, but it is to the earth we are chained; it is from the earth that we must find our sustenance; it is on the earth that we must find solutions to the problems that promise to destroy all life here. My Wilderness, 1960.