“The fact is that it is the land that has made us all Americans, and the moral is that it is the land which must be preserved to save our Americanism. Soil erosion, forest exploitation, and wildlife destruction are more insidious anti-American activities than Communism, Fascism, or foreign propagandizing.”

"Indoors and Out", Nature Magazine number 33 (May 1940) p. 255, quoted in Mark Harvey, Wilderness Forever (2005) p. 45

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The fact is that it is the land that has made us all Americans, and the moral is that it is the land which must be pres…" by Howard Zahniser?
Howard Zahniser photo
Howard Zahniser 3
American environmentalist 1906–1964

Related quotes

Jesse Jackson photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo

“The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

William McKinley photo

“The American flag has not been planted on foreign soil to acquire more territory but for humanity's sake.”

William McKinley (1843–1901) American politician, 25th president of the United States (in office from 1897 to 1901)

Quoted from July 12, 1900, on 1900 US campaign poster, of McKinley and his choice for second term Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt.
1900s

Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

“Un-American activity cannot be prevented or routed out by employing un-American methods; to preserve freedom we must use the tools that freedom provides.”

As quoted in The White House Years: Mandate for Change: 1953–1956: A Personal Account (1963), p. 331
1960s

George W. Bush photo

“American foreign policy must be more than the management of crisis. It must have a great and guiding goal: to turn this time of American influence into generations of democratic peace.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

1990s, A Distinctly American Internationalism (November 1999)

Tommy Douglas photo
Ron Paul photo

“Imagine […] that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of "keeping us safe" or "promoting democracy" or "protecting their strategic interests." Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up checkpoints on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence. Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers' attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but instead, for every American killed, ten more would take up arms against them, resulting in perpetual bloodshed. […] The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Imagine by Ron Paul http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul512.html (11 March 2009).
2000s, 2006-2009

Frances Kellor photo

“A first proposition, therefore, in Americanization is to find a way to satisfy the creative instinct in men and their sense of home, by giving them and their native-born sons the widest possible knowledge of America, including a pictorial geography, a simple history of the United States, the stories of successful Americans including those of foreign-born origin; a knowledge of American literature, of our political ideals and institutions, and of oiy: free educational opportunities. A systematic effort should be made to give them a land interest and a home stake and to get them close to the soil, not alone in the day's work but also in their cultural life. The men most likely to desert America at the close of the war will be workers with job stakes and wage rates, and not those with a home stake and investments. I would carry this campaign of information into every foreign language publication, every newspaper, every shop, and every racial center in America. The land interpreter of the future will be the government, and Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, has foreseen this in his appeal for the use of the land for the rehabilitation of men returning from the front. It is the land that will make the life of the maimed livable and will connect the past with the future. This will not be achieved by forced "back-to-the-land movements" and colonization. Each individual American who interprets the beauty of America and its meaning, and who, wherever he can, personally puts the foreign-born in touch with the soil and helps him to a plot of ground which he can call his own, is doing effective Americanization. Loyalty and efficiency are inherent in this land sense, and they are the strength of a nation.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

David Frawley photo

Related topics