Quote

At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant.

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
Firsts
Hobby
First
Hobbies
Must
Tempted
Laborious
Irrelevant
Inefficient
Useless
Blush
Degree
Satisfactory
Degrees
Wildness
Large
Conclude

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

Image
Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest.
Aldo Leopold
Image
The sweetest hunts are stolen. To steal a hunt, either go far into the wilderness where no one has been, or else find some undiscovered place under everybody's nose
Aldo Leopold
Image
Your woodlot is, in fact, an historical document which faithfully records your personal philosophy.
Aldo Leopold
Image
There are idle spots on every farm, and every highway is bordered by an idle strip as long as it is keep cow, plow, and mower out of these idle spots, and the full native flora, plus dozens of interesting stowaways from foreign parts, could be part of the normal environment of every citizen.
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
What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?
Aldo Leopold
Image
How would you like to have a thousand brilliantly colored cliff swallows keeping house in the eaves of your barn, and gobbling up insects over your farm at the rate of 100,000 per day? There are many Wisconsin farmsteads where such a swallow-show is a distinct possibility.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness heaven one may never get there.
Aldo Leopold
Image
An oak is no respecter of persons.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Six days shalt thou paddle and pack, but on the seventh thou shall wash thy socks.
Aldo Leopold
Image
How like fish we are: ready, nay eager, to seize upon whatever new thing some wind of circumstance shakes down upon the river of time! And how we rue our haste, finding the gilded morsel to contain a hook!
Aldo Leopold
Image
No one would rather hunt woodcock in October than I, but since learning of the sky dance I find myself calling one or two birds enough. I must be sure that, come April, there be no dearth of dancers in the sunset sky.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching- even when doing the wrong thing is legal.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Hydrologists have demonstrated that the meanderings of a creek are a necessary part of the hydrologic functioning. The flood plain belongs to the river. The ecologist sees clearly that for similar reasons we can get along with less channel improvement on Round River.
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
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.
Aldo Leopold
Image
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.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.
Aldo Leopold
Image
He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Wilderness is the very stuff America is made of.
Aldo Leopold