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For unnumbered centuries of human history the wilderness has given way. The priority of industry has become dogma. Are we as yet sufficiently enlightened to realize that we must now challenge that dogma, or do without our wilderness? Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?

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
Might
Industry
Wilderness
Human
Realizing
Enlightened
Humans
Century
Servant
Without
Challenges
Priorities
Unnumbered
Must
Poor
Master
Sufficiently
Way
History
Challenge
Priority
Make
Given
Masters
Dogma
Good
Become
Realize
Centuries

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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I do not imply that this philosophy of land was always clear to me. It is rather the end result of a life journey.
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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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But wherever the truth may lie, this much is crystal-clear: our bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy. . . . Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.
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It is part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it
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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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Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest.
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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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Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty.
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If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left worth fighting for.
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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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Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another.
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Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them
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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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The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.
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Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing.
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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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We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.
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There is time not only to see who has done what, but to speculate why.
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Whoever invented the word 'grace' must have seen the wing-folding of the plover.
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There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.
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