“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”
Henry David Thoreau book Walking
Source: Walking (June 1862)
“I like that saying of Thoreau’s that “in wildness is the preservation of the world.””
Settlers on this continent from the beginning have been seeking that wilderness and its wildness. The explorers and pioneers were out on the edge, seeking that wildness because they could sense that in Europe everything had become locked tight with things. The things were owned by all the same people and all of the roads went in the same direction forever. When we got here there was a sense of possibility and new direction, and it had to do with wildness.
The Paris Review interview (1994)
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Ken Kesey103
novelist 1935–2001Related quotes
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Context: I like the saying "The world is as you are." And I think films are as you are. That's why, although the frames of a film are always the same — the same number, in the same sequence, with the same sounds — every screening is different. The difference is sometimes subtle but it's there. It depends on the audience. There is a circle that goes from the audience to the film and back. Each person is looking and thinking and feeling and coming up with his or her own sense of things. And it's probably different from what I fell in love with.
So you don’t know how it's going to hit people. But if you thought about how it's going to hit people, or if it's going to hurt someone, or if it's going to do this or do that, then you would have to stop making films. You just do these things that you fall in love with, and you never know what's going to happen.
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Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist
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Context: The wild world is the human world. Having evolved in it for millions of centuries, we are not far removed by a cloth of civilization. It is packed into our genes. In fact, the more power-driven, complex and delicate our civilization becomes, the more likelihood arises that a collapse will force us back to wildness. There is in wildness a natural wisdom that shapes all Earth's experiments with life. Can we tap this wisdom without experiencing the agony of reverting to wildness? Can we combine it with intellectual developments of which we feel so proud, use it to redirect our modern trends before they lead to a worse breakdown than past civilizations have experienced? I believe we can, and that to do so we must learn from the primitive.
“Wild days, wild riders, and the stink of warfare across the world!”
Michael Moorcock book The Sword of the Dawn
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The Sword of the Dawn (1968)