Philosophers From The United States

"In every country the mountains are fountains, not only of rivers but of men. Therefore we all are born mountaineers, the offspring of rock and sunshine."

"Going to the mountains is going home."

"I would advise sitting from morning till night under some willow bush on the river bank where there is a wide view. This will be "doing the valley" far more effectively than riding along trails in constant motion from point to point. The entire valley is made up of "points of interest.""

"How terribly downright must seem the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society."

"Plants, animals, and stars are all kept in place, bridled along appointed ways, with one another, and through the midst of one another — killing and being killed, eating and being eaten, in harmonious proportions and quantities."

"No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the relations which culture sustains to wildness, as that which declares that the world as made especially for the uses of men. Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged."

"I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness."

"I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer."

"No one of the rocks seems to call me now, nor any of the distant mountains. Surely this Merced and Tuolumne chapter of my life is done."

"Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life."

""The water in music the oar forsakes." The air in music the wing forsakes. All things move in music and write it. The mouse, lizard, and grasshopper sing together on the Turlock sands, sing with the morning stars."

"The mountains are calling and I must go."

"Living artificially in towns, we are sickly, and never come to know ourselves."

"I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in "creation's dawn." The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day."

"I drifted about from rock to rock, from stream to stream, from grove to grove. Where night found me, there I camped. When I discovered a new plant, I sat down beside it for a minute or a day, to make its acquaintance and hear what it had to tell. … I asked the boulders I met, whence they came and whither they were going."

"I ran home [from Cloud's Rest to Yosemite Valley] in the moonlight, with long, firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong. Down through the junipers — down through the firs; now in jet-shadows, now in white light; over sandy moraines and bare, clanking rock; past the huge ghost of South Dome, rising weird through the firs — past glorious Nevada — past the groves of Illilouette — through the pines of the valley; frost-crystals flashing all the sky beneath, as star-crystals on all the sky above. All of this mountain-bread for one day!"

"When I reached the [Yosemite] valley, all the rocks seemed talkative, and more lovable than ever. They are dear friends, and have warm blood gushing through their granite flesh; and I love them with a love intensified by long and close companionship. … I … bathed in the bright river, sauntered over the meadows, conversed with the domes, and played with the pines."

"Rocks and waters, etc., are words of God and so are men. We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and fountainizing all."

"Man as he came from the hand of his Maker was poetic in both mind and body, but the gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed Nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual."

"I will follow my instincts, be myself for good or ill, and see what will be the upshot. As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can."

"There is at least a punky spark in my heart and it may blaze in this autumn gold, fanned by the King. Some of my grandfathers must have been born on a muirland for there is heather in me, and tinctures of bog juices, that send me to Cassiope, and oozing through all my veins impel me unhaltingly through endless glacier meadows, seemingly the deeper and danker the better."

"The whole wilderness in unity and interrelation is alive and familiar … the very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly. … No particle is ever wasted or worn out but eternally flowing from use to use."

"Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built; and rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again."

"One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature — inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out. It is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty; and we soon cease to lament waste and death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unspeakable wealth of the universe, and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance of everything that melts and fades and dies about us, feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last."

"The whole wilderness seems to be alive and familiar, full of humanity. The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly."

"Everything is flowing — going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water. Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams carrying rocks … . While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood globules in Nature's warm heart."

"Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue."

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

"A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself."

"This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!"

"So extravagant is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees,... ."

"Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever."

"Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality."

"We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us."

"John Muir, Earth — planet, Universe"

"I did find Calypso — but only once, far in the depths of the very wildest of Canadian dark woods, near those high, cold, moss-covered swamps. … I felt as if I were in the presence of superior beings who loved me and beckoned me to come. I sat down beside them and wept for joy."

"Spiritually, the entire Western Civilization — particularly from 1750 onwards — was Anglicised. The thought- and action-systems of 19th century were English: Marxism arose on the basis of English capitalist economics; Darwinism reflects the English individualistic-competitive world-outlook; Materialism, Legalism, Capitalism, Social-Ethics — all are of English provenance, and they were the foundations of the 19th century."

"The nationality of an army is that of its political leadership, not of its common soldiers or its officer corps."

"A nation shows that it is dying when it ceases to believe in its Mission and its superiority."

"Europe is equal to its historical task. Against the anti-spiritual, anti-heroic 'ideals' of America-Jewry, Europe pits its metaphysical ideas, its faith in its Destiny, its ethical principles, its heroism. Fearlessly, Europe falls in for battle, knowing it is armed with the mightiest weapon ever forged by History: the superpersonal Destiny of the European organism. Our European Mission is to create the Culture-State-Nation-Imperium of the West, and thereby we shall perform such deeds, accomplish such works, and so transform our world that our distant posterity, when they behold the remains of our buildings and ramparts, will tell their grandchildren that on the soil of Europe once dwelt a tribe of gods."

"Today Pravda says "Zionism is a tool of American imperialism". Tomorrow it will say: "American imperialism is the tool of Zionism"."

"What matters in politics above all, is not what one says, but what one does."

"The crude power structures of Washington and Moscow have no Past, and therefore no Future. They are without Tradition, without a World-Mission, without a Nation-Idea, without a Destiny, without organic unity, without a State, and without Imperial possibilities. Both of these formless things are mere pale caricatures of the one, true, World-Mission, which inheres in Europe alone. This Mission does not arise from human will, but is a direct emanation of God."

"The soul of Europe cannot be occupied, ruled, or dominated by Culture-aliens. Only a materialist could think that the possession of the tangible appurtenances of power guarantees the eternal continuance of power. If that had been so, a few castes and States would have always ruled the world, from its beginning. But, in the ultimate test, power is the reflection of inner qualities, and these qualities are not possessed by any of the outer enemies of Europe. Their transitory empires are built on sand, because underlying them there is no superpersonal soul, no World-Mission, no World-Idea, no Destiny. Even in our short lives we have seen empires come and go, and the temporary power-agglomerations of Moscow and Washington will go the same way."

"Before the First World War, Russia had figured as a Western State. Its ruling strata, its ruling outlook, were Western. The tension which existed between the Western elements of Russia and the Asiatic will-to-destruction underneath was however strained to the breaking point by the First World War, and the Asiatic elements, in conjunction with and assisted by the Culture-State-Nation-Race People-Society of the Jew all over the world, gained the upper hand and re-oriented Russia against Europe. From then onward, and also today, 1950, Russia figures as one of the leaders of the coloured revolt against the European race. But European possibilities still exist within Russia, because in certain strata of the population adherence to the great organism of the Western Culture is an instinct, an Idea, and no material force can ever wipe it out, even though it may be temporarily repressed and driven under."

"History is the continuous reinterpretation of the Past. History is thus continually "true," because, in each Age, the ruling historical outlook and values are the expression of the proper soul. The alternatives for History are not true or false, but effective or ineffective. Truth in the religio-philosophical mathematical sense, meaning timelessly, eternally valid, dissociated from the conditions of Life, does not pertain to History. History that is true is History that is effective in the minds of significant men."

"Anti-Semitism is precisely analogous in Culture pathology to the formation of anti-bodies in the bloodstream in human pathology. In both cases, the organism is resisting the alien life. Both are inevitable, organically necessary, expressions of Destiny. In fulfilling the proper, Destiny combats the alien. It cannot be said too often that hatred and malice, tolerance and goodwill, have nothing whatever to do with this fundamental process. A Culture is an organism, an organism of a different class from man, just as man is an organism of a different class from animals. But the fundamental regularities of organic life are present in all organisms, of whatever class, plant, animal, man, Culture. This hierarchy of organisms is obviously part of the divine plan, and it cannot be changed by a process of propaganda, no matter how continuous, "tolerance," no matter how self-renouncing, or self-deception, no matter how complete."

"Alliance does not mean love, any more than war means hate."

"Feminism liberated women from the natural dignity of their sex and turned them into inferior men."

"The question of who strikes first in a war is on the same level as who strikes first in a boxing contest."