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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
Love
Respect
Abuse
Belonging
Environment
Environmental
Pollution
Land
Inspiring
Preservation
Community
Regard
Commodity
Conserving
Natural
Ocean
Preserves
Wildlife
Use
Green
Wilderness
Ecology
Nature
Begin
Belong
Sustainability
May
Beginning
Caring
Conservation

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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Man brings all things to the test of himself, and this is notably true of lightning.
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The life of every river sings its own song, but in most the song is long marred by the discords of misuse.
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Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.
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The whole conflict thus boils down to a question of degree. We of the minority see a law of diminishing returns in progress our opponents do not.
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Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.
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Every farm woodland, in addition to yielding lumber, fuel and posts, should provide its owner a liberal education. This crop of wisdom never fails, but it is not always harvested.
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Twenty centuries of 'progress' have brought the average citizen a vote, a national anthem, a Ford, a bank account, and a high opinion of himself, but not the capacity to live in high density without befouling and denuding his environment, nor a conviction that such capacity, rather than such density, is the true test of whether he is civilized.
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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.
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What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?
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Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them
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The rich diversity of the world's cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.
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Never did we plan the morrow, for we had learned that in the wilderness some new and irresistible distraction is sure to turn up each day before breakfast. Like the river, we were free to wander.
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It is in midwinter that I sometimes glean from my pines... a curious transfusion of courage.
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We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses
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Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet one need only own a shovel.
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Mechanized recreation already has seized nine-tenths of the woods and mountains a decent respect for minorities should dedicate the other tenth to wilderness.
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There is yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus' slave-girls, is still property. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.
Aldo Leopold
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The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations
Aldo Leopold
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For unnumbered centuries of human history the wilderness has given way. The priority of industry has become dogma. Are we as yet sufficiently enlightened to realize that we must now challenge that dogma, or do without our wilderness? Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?
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Conservation viewed in its entirety, is the slow and laborious unfolding of a new relationship between people and land.
Aldo Leopold