Since 1972, I've been going around making speeches on the Everglades.

Elizabeth Rothra's excellent biography of Charles Torrey Simpson restates his philosophies about the intrinsic value of natural ecosystems like the Everglades. No one knew better than he the history of the plants and animals of South Florida or conveyed it with more humor and enthusiasm.

The Everglades is a test. If we pass it, we may get to keep the planet.

It's a little bit late in the day for men to object that women are getting outside their proper sphere.

There must be progress, certainly. But we must ask ourselves what kind of progress we want, and what price we want to pay for it. If, in the name of progress, we want to destroy everything beautiful in our world, and contaminate the air we breathe, and the water we drink, then we are in trouble.

The problem of the environment is the extension of good housekeeping of the thinking woman.

There is always the need to carry on.

I wanted to go to a good college, and my mind was set on Wellesley.

Life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or of a longer life, are not necessary.

There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them.

I take advantage of every thing I can - age, hair, disability - because my cause is just.

The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slowly moving, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades. It is a river of grass.

Child welfare ought really to cover all sorts of topics, such as better water and sanitation and good roads, and clean streets and public parks and playgrounds.