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All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. . . The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.

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
Individual
Single
Member
Premise
Rest
Soil
Collectively
Simply
Boundaries
Ethic
Land
Ethics
Premises
Animal
Plant
Evolved
Soils
Community
Parts
Waters
Enlarges
Upon
Animals
Include
Interdependent
Water
Members
Plants
Interdependence

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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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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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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No farmer-sportsman group is stronger than the ties of mutual confidence and enthusiasm which bind its members.
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Wildflower corners are easy to maintain, but once gone, they are hard to rebuild.
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The sweetest hunts are stolen. To steal a hunt, either go far into the wilderness where no one has been, or else find some undiscovered place under everybody's nose
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Too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run.
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There are idle spots on every farm, and every highway is bordered by an idle strip as long as it is keep cow, plow, and mower out of these idle spots, and the full native flora, plus dozens of interesting stowaways from foreign parts, could be part of the normal environment of every citizen.
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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.
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What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?
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Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?
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Hemispheric solidarity is new among statesmen, but not among the feathered navies of the sky.
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It is in midwinter that I sometimes glean from my pines... a curious transfusion of courage.
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Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching- even when doing the wrong thing is legal.
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There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.
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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.
Aldo Leopold
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If the land mechanism as a whole is good then every part is good, whether we understand it or not.
Aldo Leopold
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There is yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus' slave-girls, is still property. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.
Aldo Leopold
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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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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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All history consists of successive excursions from a single starting-point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values.
Aldo Leopold