Paul Shepard Quotes

Men are born human. What they must learn is to be an animal. If they learn otherwise it may kill them, and kill life on the planet.

There is a secret person undamaged in every individual.

The natural world is not only a set of constraints but of contexts within which we can more fully realize our dreams.

The desert sky is encircling, majestic, terrible.

The human cardiovascular system evolved as part of the physiology of [prehistoric] hunters, who ran for their lives.

Who would want to live in a world that is just not quite fatal?

Man is a distance runner as a consequence of hundreds of thousands of years of chasing antelopes, horses, elephants, wild cattle, and deer.

Men ran after and ate horses for four hundred thousand years. The outcome is more than a love of horse flesh; it is a runner's body.

When men do not run they are likely to die prematurely from dysfunction of the heart and vascular systems or from disabling chronic disease.