Where all of this came from
Every photo on the front page is a real place in Illinois that you can go visit, taken by a real person who let other people use it. Every quote is something a real person actually said or wrote. Here is the whole list.
The photos
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All of these came from Wikimedia Commons. Photos marked CC BY or CC BY-SA are free to use as long as the photographer is credited — that is what this page is for. Photos marked CC0 or public domain have no conditions at all. If you swap in your own photos, keep a page like this one.
The quotes
“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”
Aldo Leopold
From the foreword to A Sand County Almanac, published in 1949.
“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
Jane Goodall
The scientist who spent decades studying wild chimpanzees in Tanzania. She has said and written this many times in her books and talks.
“In nature nothing exists alone.”
Rachel Carson
From Silent Spring, 1962 — the book that got DDT banned and more or less started modern environmentalism.
“We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.”
Gwendolyn Brooks
From her poem “Paul Robeson,” 1970. Brooks lived in Chicago and was the Poet Laureate of Illinois.
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.”
Robert Swan
The first person to walk to both the North and South Poles. He says this one in nearly every talk he gives.
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
John Muir
From My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911. Muir helped create the national parks.
“It's the little things citizens do. That's what will make the difference.”
Wangari Maathai
The Kenyan activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for a movement that planted tens of millions of trees. Her next line is: “My little thing is planting trees.”
“No one is too small to make a difference.”
Greta Thunberg
She started skipping school on Fridays to sit outside the Swedish parliament at age fifteen. This became the title of her first book, in 2019.
“We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.”
Barack Obama
The 44th President, who was a state senator in Springfield and a senator for Illinois before that. He used this line often in speeches around 2014.
“I was born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.”
Carl Sandburg
The opening of his poem “Prairie,” 1918. Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois.