It contains more than 200 pages of comments from Hickel on a wide range of subjects collected by Roberts through the years "on the backs of envelopes, airplane napkins and whatever else I could lay my hands on while we traveled together."
Some of the comments are funny, some testify to Hickel's wide-ranging, hard-to-classify views on development, the Arctic, politics and life in general. Some make you stop and think.
A sampling:
If God didn't like big projects, he wouldn't have created the universe.
All pioneers are optimists. The pessimist never gets out of town.
The great frontier of tomorrow will be to discover the world's emptiness.
Over-crowding is the issue, not over-population.
As the world population grows, the lands within the temperate and tropical climates will be used more and more for living and enjoyment. For the resources we need, mankind will look to the Arctic, the oceans and outer space.
Man will not change the Arctic as much as the Arctic will change man.
The Arctic is probably the most misunderstood place on earth. It is even more mysterious than the moon.
I might be worried if this were the only planet we could see, the only star in the sky.
What machine do you know that on a bowl of cereal in the morning, a peanut butter sandwich at lunch, and a spaghetti dinner, can do that amount of work?
If no one owns something, no one cares.
There are some things we will always own in common. No one will ever homestead an ocean.
When a man thinks he's too good to do another man's work, he neither understands work nor understands the man. I'm glad I was a bartender.
Alaska, this unique piece of geology, is a bridge between the anglo-western, Judeo-Christian, European world and that part of the world that is not necessarily anglo, western or Judeo-Christian.
Alaska is an Owner State. That's real. You can't wish it away.
America has fouled its rivers and lakes and encouraged its great cities to jam themselves with millions of people. The rest of the country has committed the crime. But Congress wants Alaska to pay the penalty.
The Pacific is where the future is, because that's where the people are. That's where the needs are. That's where the opportunities are.
Japan -- not east not west -- the damnedest thing you ever saw.
China is just going to wear you out.
I am sick and tired of those who say life is cheap in Asia. Life is only cheap when it is not your own.
The color of the environment is not just green. It's real.
The doers have done more for the environment than the don'ters.
You can only clean up the environment with progress.
A true environmentalist is a caveman without a match.
There's no way a public hearing can design a road.
If I owned a newspaper, one day I would run a banner headline that read, "NO NEWS TODAY."
No project I ever built made sense at the bottom line, and I made millions. I didn't study the bottom line. I studied the opportunity.
I like to talk about God. Most politicians avoid it. Maybe they find him embarrassing. Maybe they think he's their competition.
When I'm trying hard to solve a problem, I just let the little guy (inside) speak.
My little guy. He's my buddy. He never gets mad. Sometimes he hides. But then he comes out.
I get teased by the newspapers when I mention the little guy. But I don't care, because everyone has one.
I'll keep fighting for what I believe in forever. That's why I told my wife, Ermalee, to bury me standing up.
Someone has to recognize that all the people on the earth are human.
Dream big dreams. Because if you dream little dreams, you can only achieve little things. But if you dream big dreams, you can achieve little things and big things.
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