25 Terry Tempest Williams Quotes for Conservation

By Clifton Sankofa | Published September 3, 2023

Get inspired with our Terry Tempest Williams quotes.

Terry Tempest Williams has been advocating, teaching, and writing about the issues dear to her for decades.

Learn more about this influential American writer with our Terry Tempest Williams quotes.

Who is Terry Tempest Williams?

Terry Tempest Williams is an American writer and environmental advocate.

She has fought for environmental and social justice her entire career.

Check out these interesting Terry Tempest Williams facts below:

Williams’ work is inspired by the natural environments in Utah.
She has received dozens of awards for her conservation work.
Williams has published many pieces of environmental literature.

Terry Tempest Williams is many things.

She is a Provostial Scholar at Dartmouth College.

She has been featured in the New York Times and The New Yorker.

Tempest and her husband recently purchased an oil and gas company as conservation buyers.

The extraordinary life of Terry Tempest Williams

Fans of her work call Williams a citizen writer.

A citizen writer is someone who speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life.

Williams is a fierce advocate for the freedom of speech and uses her platform as a naturalist to speak on behalf of our environment.

Her work causes the audience to question the world around them.

Williams has much to say on topics we take for granted, such as power.

Of power, she asked:

“What might a different kind of power look like, feel like, and can power be redistributed equitably even beyond our own species?”

Williams has authored various books about the environment and testified before Congress on women’s health issues.

Remaining courageous during times of cowardice

It takes courage to stand up to big corporations in the name of the people or the planet.

She believes that the challenges facing our world, such as environmental health or the overall treatment of women across the globe, are more than matters of opinion.

She contends that they are matters of justice.

Check out our Terry Tempest Williams quotes to learn more about this phenomenal woman.

Short Terry Tempest Williams quotes from Refuge

We start our list with these short quotes from the spiritual writer.

1. “It made sense to a child.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

2. “Family worship was not just relegated to Sunday in a chapel” — Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

3. “Each occupied an assigned sphere of influence, each has a place and a purpose.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

4. “We learned at an early age that God can be found wherever you are, especially outside.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

5. “And if the natural world was assigned spiritual values, then those days spent in wildness were sacred.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

The top Terry Tempest Williams quotes about the power of prayer

Williams prays for all beings to experience peace.

6. “I was raised to believe in a spirit world.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

7. “And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen” — Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

8. “I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

9. “I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

10. “I pray to them because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day the invocations and benedictions of Earth.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

The best Terry Tempest Williams quotes from Desert Quarter

Here, Williams addresses the connection between the desert and love.

11. “I turn sideways, my chest and back in a vise of geologic time.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Desert Quartet

12. “I continue walking. In some places, my hips can barely fit through.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Desert Quartet

13. “The silence that lives in these sacred hallways presses against me. I relax. I surrender.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Desert Quartet

14. “The arousal of my breath rises in me like music, like love, as the possessive muscles between my legs tighten and release.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Desert Quartet

15. “I come to the rock in a moment of stillness, giving and receiving, where there is no partition between my body and the body of the Earth.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Desert Quartet

Famous Terry Tempest Williams quotes about family heirlooms

Below, Williams passionately writes about a necklace her grandmother gifted her.

16. “My grandmother’s contemplation of shells has become my own.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Stories from the Field

17. “When I die, she said smiling, these shells will be your inheritance.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Stories from the Field

18. “Each shell is a whorl of creative expression, an architecture of a soul.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Stories from the Field

19. “Beauty, awe, and curiosity were values illuminated in our own home.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Stories from the Field

20. “They remind me of my natural history, that I was tutored by a woman who courted solitude and made pilgrimages to the edges of our continent in the name of her own pleasure.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Stories from the Field

Terry Tempest Williams quotes and sayings to live by

We close with these Terry Tempest Williams quotes about life.

21. “I look up a slit of sky above. Light is deceptive here.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Desert Quartet

22. “The palms of my hands search for a pulse in the rocks.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Desert Quartet

23. “Spiritual beliefs are not something alien from Earth, but rise out of its very soil.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Leap

24. “I was raised to believe that life exists before the earth and will continue to exist afterward.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

25. “I was raised to believe that each human being, bird, and bulrush, along with all other life forms, had a spirit life before it came to dwell physically on the earth.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge