In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that's on it is a mental construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms. It is an indoor philosophy.

To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.

The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.

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

I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous.

Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

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

Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.

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

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

That the other suffers has to be learned

I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him you have no business with consequences you are to tell the truth.

I love a large cast of characters. That's the way life is: it's flooded with people and we keep them all straight.

Using iPads as cameras, for example, is like taking pictures with a cafeteria tray.

I wouldn't go back and change anything.

Being in Europe had helped me unlearn some of what I'd been taught or unconsciously believed.

In America we eat, collectively, with a glum urge for food to fill us. We are ignorant of flavour. We are as a nation taste-blind.

Other world? There is no other world; here or nowhere is the whole fact.

Weep like the waterwheel, that green herbs may spring up from the courtyard of your soul. If you wish for tears, have mercy on one who sheds tears; if you wish mercy, show mercy to the weak.

Be good or don't get caught.