I see an America whose rivers and valleys and lakes hills and streams and plains the mountains over our land and nature's wealth deep under the earth are protected as the rightful heritage of all the people.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of protecting America's natural resources as a shared legacy.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's quote advocates for the preservation of America's natural landscape, emphasizing that rivers, valleys, lakes, and other resources are not merely commodities, but rather a collective heritage that belongs to all citizens. This call to action highlights the responsibility of society to safeguard the environment for current and future generations, recognizing nature's value beyond its economic aspects.
In practice
During a speech on environmental policy, one could quote Roosevelt to emphasize nature conservation.
There has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda. This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, that Americans have considerable industrial power - but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight. ... Let them tell that to the Marines!
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.
We're a part of nature. As we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves. It's a selfish thing to want to protect nature.
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river where it flows among green airs and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.... Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.
April ... hath put a spirit of youth in everything.
The grim frost is at hand, when apples will fall thick, almost thunderous, on the hardened earth.
Well, I know now. I know a little more how much a simple thing like a snowfall can mean to a person
If you know wilderness in the way that you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go.... This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future.
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