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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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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
Materials
Civilization
Called
Men
Artifact
Hammered
Artifacts
Wilderness
Material

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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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We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.
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To look into the eyes of a wolf is to see your own soul - hope you like what you see.
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It is in midwinter that I sometimes glean from my pines... a curious transfusion of courage.
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Patriotism requires less and less of making the eagle scream, but more and more of making him think.
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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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No farmer-sportsman group is stronger than the ties of mutual confidence and enthusiasm which bind its members.
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Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.
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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.
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Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.
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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.
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There is value in any experience that exercises those ethical restraints collectively called sportsmanship.
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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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The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?
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Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism.
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Mechanized recreation already has seized nine-tenths of the woods and mountains a decent respect for minorities should dedicate the other tenth to wilderness.
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The rich diversity of the world's cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.
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What a dull world if we knew all about geese!
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Keeping records enhances the pleasure of the search and the chance of finding order and meaning in these events.
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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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