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

More quotes by 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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To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste to others, the most valuable part.
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The landscape of any farm is the owner's portrait of himself.
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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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The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.
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Teach the student to see the land, understand what he sees, and enjoy what he understands.
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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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Six days shalt thou paddle and pack, but on the seventh thou shall wash thy socks.
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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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Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them
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There are two things that interest me: the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to land.
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The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.
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We console ourselves with the comfortable fallacy that a single museum piece will do, ignoring the clear dictum of history that a species must be saved in many places if it is to be saved at all.
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O, God assist our side: at least, avoid assisting the enemy and leave the rest to me
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Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty.
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An oak is no respecter of persons.
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...to any one for whom wild things are something more than a pleasant diversion, (conservation) constitutes one of the milestones in moral evolution.
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What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?
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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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