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We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness.

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
Life
Dullness
Prosperity
Strive
Safety
Comfort
Long

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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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.
Aldo Leopold
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The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.
Aldo Leopold
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We face the question whether a still higher standard of living is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free.
Aldo Leopold
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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
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No matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows, one can never learn all the salient facts about any one of them.
Aldo Leopold
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Man always kills the thing he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?
Aldo Leopold
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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.
Aldo Leopold
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Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry.
Aldo Leopold
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That dark laboratory we call the soil.
Aldo Leopold
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I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.
Aldo Leopold
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There are degrees and kinds of solitude. I know of no solitude so secure as one guarded by a spring flood nor do the geese, who have seen more kinds and degrees of aloneness than I have.
Aldo Leopold
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Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.
Aldo Leopold
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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.
Aldo Leopold
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We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.
Aldo Leopold
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It is part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it
Aldo Leopold
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It is in midwinter that I sometimes glean from my pines... a curious transfusion of courage.
Aldo Leopold
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Wildlife administration, in this respect, is not yet a profession.
Aldo Leopold
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For us in the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.
Aldo Leopold
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To look into the eyes of a wolf is to see your own soul - hope you like what you see.
Aldo Leopold
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We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses
Aldo Leopold