Wallace Stegner

Something will have gone out of us as a people
 if we ever let the remaining wilderness be
 destroyed ... We need wilderness preserved —
 as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds
 — because it was the challenge against which
 our character as a people was formed ... We
 simply need that wild country available to us,
 even if we never do more than drive to its
 edge and look in. For it can be a means of
 reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures,
 a part of the geography of hope.

-Wallace Stegner