Quote

On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh.

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
Sky
Begun
Spirals
Settle
Descending
Wing
Arcs
Crane
Feeding
Sweep
Marsh
Settling
Grounds
Mists
Final
Emerge
Cranes
Finals
Mist
Motionless
Wings
Lifting
Marshes

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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A land ethic...reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity.
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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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If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left worth fighting for.
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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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I have purposely presented the land ethic as a product of social evolution because nothing so important as an ethic is ever 'written'… It evolves in the minds of a thinking community.
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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. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree - and there will be one.
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What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?
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Like all real treasures of the mind, perception can be split into infinitely small fractions without losing its quality. The weeds in a city lot convey the same lesson as the redwoods the farmer may see in his cow-pasture what may not be vouchsafed to the scientist adventuring in the South Seas.
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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.
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The only true development in American recreational resources is the development of the perceptive faculty in Americans. All of the other acts we grace by that name are, at best, attempts to retard or mask the process of dilution.
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Too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run.
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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.
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Your woodlot is, in fact, an historical document which faithfully records your personal philosophy.
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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.
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...to any one for whom wild things are something more than a pleasant diversion, (conservation) constitutes one of the milestones in moral evolution.
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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?
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If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left, in my opinion, worth fighting for or to be more exact, a completely industrialized United States is of no consequence to me.
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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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There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.
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Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?
Aldo Leopold