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Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays.

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
Right
Cease
Profit
Argument
Condoned
Pay
Intimidated
Impossible
Profits
Wrong
Pays
Action
Maximum
Doe
Yield

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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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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Our remnants of wilderness will yield bigger values to the nation's character and health than they will to its pocketbook, and to destroy them will be to admit that the latter are the only values that interest us.
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Land health is the capacity for self-renewal in the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise the land.
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A river or stream is a cycle of energy from sun to plants to insects to fish. It is a continuum broken only by humans.
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To build a road is so much simpler than to think of what the country really needs.
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Wilderness is a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two weeks' pack trip, and kept devoid of roads, artificial trails, cottages, or other works of man.
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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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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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Conservation viewed in its entirety, is the slow and laborious unfolding of a new relationship between people and land.
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We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.
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It must be poor life that achieves freedom from fear.
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Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.
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Whoever invented the word 'grace' must have seen the wing-folding of the plover.
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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.
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. . . perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a wild river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in singing waters . . . glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.
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A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of his land.
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The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations
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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.
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Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.
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Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization. Wilderness was never a homogenous raw material. It was very diverse. The differences in the product are known as cultures. The rich diversity of the worlds cultures reflects a corresponding diversity. In the wilds that gave them birth.
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