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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
Material
Materials
Civilization
Called
Men
Artifact
Hammered
Artifacts
Wilderness

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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.
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How like fish we are: ready, nay eager, to seize upon whatever new thing some wind of circumstance shakes down upon the river of time! And how we rue our haste, finding the gilded morsel to contain a hook!
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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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Wildflower corners are easy to maintain, but once gone, they are hard to rebuild.
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The richest values of wilderness lie not in the days of Daniel Boone, nor even in the present, but rather in the future.
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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.
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Only economists mistake physical opulence for riches.
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Land is not merely soil, it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals.
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Wilderness, then, assumes unexpected importance as a laboratory for the study of land - health.
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What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?
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Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays.
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There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.
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I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.
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Our remnants of wilderness will yield bigger values to the nation's character and health than they will to its pocketbook, and to destroy them will be to admit that the latter are the only values that interest us.
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Only the most uncritical minds are free from doubt.
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Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.
Aldo Leopold
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The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism.
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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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One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.
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Once you learn to read the land, I have no fear of what you will do to it, or with it. And I know many pleasant things it will do to you.
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