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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

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Aldo Leopold
Age: 60 †
Born: 1887
Born: January 1
Died: 1948
Died: January 1
Academic
Author
Botanical Collector
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Forestry Scientist
Naturalist
Philosopher
University Teacher
Burlington
Iowa
Aldo Starker Leopold
Rand Aldo Leopold
Natural
Ocean
Preserves
Wildlife
Use
Green
Wilderness
Ecology
Nature
Begin
Belong
Sustainability
May
Beginning
Caring
Conservation
Love
Respect
Abuse
Belonging
Environment
Environmental
Pollution
Land
Inspiring
Preservation
Community
Regard
Commodity
Conserving

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of whom have forgotten there is any such thing as land, among whom education and culture have become almost synonymous with landlessness. This is the problem of conservation education.
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Six days shalt thou paddle and pack, but on the seventh thou shall wash thy socks.
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The worthiness of any cause is not measured by its clean record, but by its readiness to see the blots when they are pointed out, and to change its mind.
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Agricultural science is largely a race between the emergence of new pests and the emergence of new techniques for their control.
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A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
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A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of his land.
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Tell me of what plant-birthday a man takes notice, and I shall tell you a good deal about his vocation, his hobbies, his hay fever, and the general level of his ecological education.
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No farmer-sportsman group is stronger than the ties of mutual confidence and enthusiasm which bind its members.
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Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness heaven one may never get there.
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Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.
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All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.
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Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism.
Aldo Leopold
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There can be no doubt that a society rooted in the soil is more stable than one rooted in pavements.
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Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient.
Aldo Leopold
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The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?
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Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing.
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All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.
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The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism.
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It is in midwinter that I sometimes glean from my pines... a curious transfusion of courage.
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What more delightful avocation than to take a piece of land and by cautious experimentation to prove how it works. What more substantial service to conservation than to practice it on one's own land?
Aldo Leopold