Quote

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.

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
Needs
Neither
Folk
Loophole
Poet
Poets
Shovel
Creation
Acts
Shovels
Tree
Gods
Ordinarily
Example
Curious
Loopholes
Virtue
Plant
Pine
May
Folks
Restriction
Circumvent
Need
Rules
Reserved
Humbler

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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In farm country, the plover has only two real enemies: the gully and the drainage ditch. Perhaps we shall one day find that these are our enemies, too.
Aldo Leopold
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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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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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Having to squeeze the last drop of utility out of the land has the same desperate finality as having to chop up the furniture to keep warm.
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Wildflower corners are easy to maintain, but once gone, they are hard to rebuild.
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One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.
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The first law of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts
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.
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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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I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush and it is the same river who before I can bring my friends to view his work erases it forever from human view. After that it exists only in my mind's eye.
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I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.
Aldo Leopold
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That the situation appears hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.
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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.
Aldo Leopold
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Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty.
Aldo Leopold
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Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.
Aldo Leopold
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O, God assist our side: at least, avoid assisting the enemy and leave the rest to me
Aldo Leopold
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We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.
Aldo Leopold
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The rich diversity of the world's cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.
Aldo Leopold
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Keeping records enhances the pleasure of the search and the chance of finding order and meaning in these events.
Aldo Leopold
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I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades.
Aldo Leopold