Quote

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.

Aldo Leopold

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Days
Ezekiel
Since
Isaiah
Belief
Affirmed
Wrong
Asserted
Society
Thinkers
Individual
Thinker
However
Land
Inexpedient

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

Image
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.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Two things hold promise of improving those lights. One is to apply science to land-use. The other is to cultivate a love of country a little less spangled with stars, and a little more imbued with that respect for mother-earth - the lack of which is, to me, the outstanding attribute of the machine-age.
Aldo Leopold
Image
What conservation education must build is an ethical underpinning for land economics and a universal curiosity to understand the land mechanism. Conservation may then follow.
Aldo Leopold
Image
I shall now confess to you that none of those three trout had to be beheaded, or folded double, to fit their casket. What was big was not the trout, but the chance. What was full was not my creel, but my memory.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness heaven one may never get there.
Aldo Leopold
Image
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.
Aldo Leopold
Image
The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?
Aldo Leopold
Image
Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.
Aldo Leopold
Image
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.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Science contributes moral as well as material blessings to the world. Its great moral contribution is objectivity, or the scientific point of view. This means doubting everything except facts it means hewing to the facts, let the chips fall where they may.
Aldo Leopold
Image
The only true development in American recreational resources is the development of the perceptive faculty in Americans. All of the other acts we grace by that name are, at best, attempts to retard or mask the process of dilution.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?
Aldo Leopold
Image
The whole conflict thus boils down to a question of degree. We of the minority see a law of diminishing returns in progress our opponents do not.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow... the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible.
Aldo Leopold
Image
That dark laboratory we call the soil.
Aldo Leopold
Image
The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.
Aldo Leopold
Image
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
Image
For us in the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.
Aldo Leopold