Bernard DeVoto

“The West begins where the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches.”

“It is the first step in sociological wisdom to recognize that the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur.”

“So far as the United States is concerned, the West is a country, and it is a country by virtue of its geography.”

“The national parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.”

“Patriotism is not the last refuge of a scoundrel but the first.”

“An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral.”

“We have no reason to be afraid of the machine, but we have some reason to be afraid of ourselves.”

“One of the clichés of American life is that we are a nation of joiners.”

“Obscenity is not a quality inherent in a book or picture, but is a function of the reader or beholder.”

“A historian is a prophet in reverse.”

“A page of history is worth a volume of logic.”