"If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers"
About this Quote
Krutch’s line lands like a courtroom objection dressed up as a joke: the same act of destruction gets morally rebranded depending on who profits from it. By setting “replaceable made by mankind” against “irreplaceable made by God,” he rigs the comparison so the reader feels the imbalance in their gut. A smashed window can be fixed. A wetland paved over can’t. The punch is the last word, “developers,” which in American life usually arrives with a halo of progress, jobs, and inevitability. Krutch flips that halo into an indictment.
The intent is less to romanticize “nature” than to expose how language launders violence. “Vandal” is a social category reserved for the powerless: impulsive, criminal, unserious. “Developer” is the respectable cousin: strategic, visionary, tax-base-building. Krutch’s subtext is that we don’t just permit ecological loss; we normalize it through status and vocabulary. Destruction becomes “growth,” clear-cutting becomes “land use,” extraction becomes “resource management.” The quote is a small taxonomy of hypocrisy.
Context matters: mid-century America was in love with postwar expansion, highways, suburbs, dams, and the engineering mindset that treated landscapes as raw material. Krutch, writing as a public environmental conscience before “environmentalism” hardened into policy, is arguing that reverence is selectively applied. He invokes “God” not to preach but to claim a higher, non-market authorship for the living world, making development look less like enterprise and more like sacrilege.
It works because it’s funny in the way a good accusation is funny: it leaves you laughing and then checking your own complicity.
The intent is less to romanticize “nature” than to expose how language launders violence. “Vandal” is a social category reserved for the powerless: impulsive, criminal, unserious. “Developer” is the respectable cousin: strategic, visionary, tax-base-building. Krutch’s subtext is that we don’t just permit ecological loss; we normalize it through status and vocabulary. Destruction becomes “growth,” clear-cutting becomes “land use,” extraction becomes “resource management.” The quote is a small taxonomy of hypocrisy.
Context matters: mid-century America was in love with postwar expansion, highways, suburbs, dams, and the engineering mindset that treated landscapes as raw material. Krutch, writing as a public environmental conscience before “environmentalism” hardened into policy, is arguing that reverence is selectively applied. He invokes “God” not to preach but to claim a higher, non-market authorship for the living world, making development look less like enterprise and more like sacrilege.
It works because it’s funny in the way a good accusation is funny: it leaves you laughing and then checking your own complicity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Nature |
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