Quote

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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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
Middlemen
Men
Awareness
Cluttered
Civilization
Industry
Elemental
Relationship
Elementals
Growing
Gadgets
Support
Supports
Forget
Forgetting
Earth
Fancy

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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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The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?
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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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We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.
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Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal.
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Only the most uncritical minds are free from doubt.
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The good life of any river may depend on the perception of its music and the preservation of some music to perceive.
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No farmer-sportsman group is stronger than the ties of mutual confidence and enthusiasm which bind its members.
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We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses
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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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Wildflower corners are easy to maintain, but once gone, they are hard to rebuild.
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Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness heaven one may never get there.
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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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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.
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Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient.
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Twenty centuries of 'progress' have brought the average citizen a vote, a national anthem, a Ford, a bank account, and a high opinion of himself, but not the capacity to live in high density without befouling and denuding his environment, nor a conviction that such capacity, rather than such density, is the true test of whether he is civilized.
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The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations
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That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.
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