The West Quotes
They Said It
| "God has nearly to kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons." - John Muir reflecting on an 1867 factory accident that left him blind for a month24 |
| "In a recent bulletin of the [Census for 1890] appear these significant words: [...] '[A]t present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line.' [...] This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development." - Frederick Jackson Turner essentially announcing the end of an era of western expansion25 |
| "We all love the sound of whispering winds amid the trees, but the wail of a hungry baby will make us forget it for the while as we try to minister to its wants. You lovers of nature will do well to give less attention to nature's beauties and more sympathy to the wants of men." - Congressman Marcus Smith of Arizona in response to John Muir and in support of the Hetch Hetchy dam30 |