Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

Image
Hemispheric solidarity is new among statesmen, but not among the feathered navies of the sky.
Aldo Leopold
Image
There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Relegating conservation to government is like relegating virtue to the Sabbath. Turns over to professionals what should be daily work of amateurs .
Aldo Leopold
Image
Agricultural science is largely a race between the emergence of new pests and the emergence of new techniques for their control.
Aldo Leopold
Image
...to any one for whom wild things are something more than a pleasant diversion, (conservation) constitutes one of the milestones in moral evolution.
Aldo Leopold
Image
The landscape of any farm is the owner's portrait of himself.
Aldo Leopold
Image
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.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Bread and beauty grow best together. Their harmonious integration can make farming not only a business but an art the land not only a food-factory but an instrument for self-expression, on which each can play music to his own choosing.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Mechanized recreation already has seized nine-tenths of the woods and mountains a decent respect for minorities should dedicate the other tenth to wilderness.
Aldo Leopold
Image
The richest values of wilderness lie not in the days of Daniel Boone, nor even in the present, but rather in the future.
Aldo Leopold
Image
An oak is no respecter of persons.
Aldo Leopold
Image
There is, as yet, no sense of pride in the husbandry of wild plants and animals, no sense of shame in the proprietorship of a sick landscape. We tilt windmills in behalf of conservation in convention halls and editorial offices, but on the back forty we disclaim even owning a lance.
Aldo Leopold
Image
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Thus far we have considered the problem of conservation of land purely as an economic issue. A false front of exclusively economic determinism is so habitual to Americans in discussing public questions that one must speak in the language of compound interest to get a hearing.
Aldo Leopold
Image
We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.
Aldo Leopold
Image
No important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal chage in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions.
Aldo Leopold
Image
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.
Aldo Leopold
Image
The real jewel of my disease-ridden woodlot is the prothonotary warbler. ... The flash of his gold-and-blue plumage amid the dank decay of the June woods is in itself proof that dead trees are transmuted into living animals, and vice versa.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Patriotism requires less and less of making the eagle scream, but more and more of making him think.
Aldo Leopold