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The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?

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
Animal
Tinkering
Word
Cogs
Lasts
Precaution
Last
Pet
Nature
Fishing
Good
Plant
Men
Ignorance
Says

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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Individual thinkers since the days of Ezekiel and Isaiah have asserted that the despoliation of land is not only inexpedient but wrong. Society, however, has not yet affirmed their belief.
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Wilderness is the very stuff America is made of.
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When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may see it with love and respect. - Perhaps such a shift of values can be achieved by reappraising things unnatural, tame, and confined in terms of things natural, wild, and free.
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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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If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left worth fighting for.
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An oak is no respecter of persons.
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That the situation appears hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.
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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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Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest.
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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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I love all trees, but I am in love with pines.
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Man brings all things to the test of himself, and this is notably true of lightning.
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The wind that makes music in November corn is in a hurry. The stalks hum, the loose husks whisk skyward in half-playing swirls, and the wind hurries on.... A tree tries to argue, bare limbs waving, but there is no detaining the wind.
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There are two things that interest me: the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to land.
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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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It must be poor life that achieves freedom from fear.
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At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant.
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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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Prudence never kindled a fire in the human mind I have no hope for conservation born of fear.
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