Quote

Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides, but they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history, to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.

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
Grows
Command
Suffice
History
Faster
Oldest
Better
Tasks
Atom
Live
Piece
Crack
Human
Tools
Tides
Humans
Pieces
Cracks
Without
Grow
Atoms
Land
Task
Spoiling

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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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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Prudence never kindled a fire in the human mind I have no hope for conservation born of fear.
Aldo Leopold
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We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
Aldo Leopold
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Hydrologists have demonstrated that the meanderings of a creek are a necessary part of the hydrologic functioning. The flood plain belongs to the river. The ecologist sees clearly that for similar reasons we can get along with less channel improvement on Round River.
Aldo Leopold
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Only economists mistake physical opulence for riches.
Aldo Leopold
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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.
Aldo Leopold
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The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.
Aldo Leopold
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The road to conservation is paved with good intentions that often prove futile, or even dangerous, due to a lack of understanding of either land or economic land use.
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.
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The only true development in American recreational resources is the development of the perceptive faculty in Americans. All of the other acts we grace by that name are, at best, attempts to retard or mask the process of dilution.
Aldo Leopold
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Individual thinkers since the days of Ezekiel and Isaiah have asserted that the despoliation of land is not only inexpedient but wrong. Society, however, has not yet affirmed their belief.
Aldo Leopold
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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.
Aldo Leopold
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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.
Aldo Leopold
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Wildlife administration, in this respect, is not yet a profession.
Aldo Leopold
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That dark laboratory we call the soil.
Aldo Leopold
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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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Ideas, like men, can become dictators. We Americans have so far escaped regimentation by our rulers, but have we escaped regimentation by our own ideas? I doubt if there exists today a more complete regimentation of the human mind than that accomplished by our self-imposed doctrine of ruthless utilitarianism.
Aldo Leopold
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Hemispheric solidarity is new among statesmen, but not among the feathered navies of the sky.
Aldo Leopold
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What more delightful avocation than to take a piece of land and by cautious experimentation to prove how it works. What more substantial service to conservation than to practice it on one's own land?
Aldo Leopold
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The life of every river sings its own song, but in most the song is long marred by the discords of misuse.
Aldo Leopold