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We Americans, in most states at least, have not yet experienced a bear-less, eagle-less, cat- less, wolf-less woods. Germany strove for maximum yields of both timber and game and got neither.

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
Least
Germany
Timber
Games
Cat
Yields
Less
Woods
Eagle
States
Bear
Eagles
Neither
Wolf
Bears
Maximum
Americans
Yield
Game
Experienced
Strove

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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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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Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree - and there will be one.
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The art of land doctoring is being practiced with vigor, but the science of land health is yet to be born.
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On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh.
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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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All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.
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If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left, in my opinion, worth fighting for or to be more exact, a completely industrialized United States is of no consequence to me.
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Land is not merely soil, it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals.
Aldo Leopold
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Having to squeeze the last drop of utility out of the land has the same desperate finality as having to chop up the furniture to keep warm.
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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 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
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Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet one need only own a shovel.
Aldo Leopold
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Never did we plan the morrow, for we had learned that in the wilderness some new and irresistible distraction is sure to turn up each day before breakfast. Like the river, we were free to wander.
Aldo Leopold
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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
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Keeping records enhances the pleasure of the search and the chance of finding order and meaning in these events.
Aldo Leopold
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The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations
Aldo Leopold
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There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.
Aldo Leopold
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A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct
Aldo Leopold
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There are degrees and kinds of solitude. I know of no solitude so secure as one guarded by a spring flood nor do the geese, who have seen more kinds and degrees of aloneness than I have.
Aldo Leopold
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The drama of the sky dance is enacted nightly on hundreds of farms, the owners of which sigh for entertainment, but harbor the illusion that it is to be sought in theaters. They live on the land, but not by the land.
Aldo Leopold