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We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.

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
Nature
Strive
Important
Harmony
Thing
Higher
Never
Achieve
People
Liberty
Aspirations
Shall
Aspiration
Land
Absolutes
Justice
Absolute

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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Land is not merely soil, it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals.
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There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.
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Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching- even when doing the wrong thing is legal.
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A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct
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An oak is no respecter of persons.
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I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.
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Only economists mistake physical opulence for riches.
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The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.
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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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To those who know the speech of hills and rivers straightening a stream is like shipping vagrants—a very successful method of passing trouble from one place to the next. It solves nothing in any collective sense.
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Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides, but they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history, to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.
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A profession is a body of men who voluntarily measure their work by a higher standard than their clients demand. To be professionally acceptable, a policy must be sound as well as salable. Wildlife administration, in this respect, is not yet a profession.
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Prudence never kindled a fire in the human mind I have no hope for conservation born of fear.
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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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One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.
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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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Patriotism requires less and less of making the eagle scream, but more and more of making him think.
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In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries no man can ignore all of them.
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That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.
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Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal.
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