Marjory Stoneman Douglas

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

“The wealth of south Florida, but even more important, the meaning and significance of south Florida lies in the black muck of the Everglades and the inevitable development of this country to be the great tropic agricultural center of the world.”

“The hardest thing is to tell the truth about oneself. One doesn't like to remember unpleasant details, but forgetting them makes one's life seem disorganized.”

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

“Conservation is now a dead word.”

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

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

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

“Sometimes, I tell them more than they wanted to know.”

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

“I'm just a tough old woman.”

“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.”

“Whoever wants me to talk, I'll come over and tell them about the necessity of preserving the Everglades.”

“You can't conserve what you haven't got.”

“To be a friend of the Everglades is not necessarily to spend time wandering around out there.”

“They are unique in the simplicity, the diversity, the related harmony of the forms of life that they enclose.”

“No matter how poor my eyes are I can still talk.”

“I'll talk about the Everglades at the drop of a hat.”

“I feel greatly at fault in not having made a loud public protest about Belle Glade before this.”

“All we need, really, is a change from a near frigid to a tropical attitude of mind.”