Quote

Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow... the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible.

Aldo Leopold

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Resources
Creation
Grow
Full
Impossible
Shrink
Grows
Resource
Word
Shrinks
Sense
Wilderness

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

Image
Thus far we have considered the problem of conservation of land purely as an economic issue. A false front of exclusively economic determinism is so habitual to Americans in discussing public questions that one must speak in the language of compound interest to get a hearing.
Aldo Leopold
Image
One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.
Aldo Leopold
Image
I shall now confess to you that none of those three trout had to be beheaded, or folded double, to fit their casket. What was big was not the trout, but the chance. What was full was not my creel, but my memory.
Aldo Leopold
Image
There are two things that interest me: the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to land.
Aldo Leopold
Image
The first law of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts
Aldo Leopold
Image
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.
Aldo Leopold
Image
The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism.
Aldo Leopold
Image
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
Image
For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Patriotism requires less and less of making the eagle scream, but more and more of making him think.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run.
Aldo Leopold
Image
There is time not only to see who has done what, but to speculate why.
Aldo Leopold
Image
He who hopes for spring with upturned eye never sees so small a thing as Draba. He who despairs of spring with downcast eye steps on it, unknowing. He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance.
Aldo Leopold
Image
A river or stream is a cycle of energy from sun to plants to insects to fish. It is a continuum broken only by humans.
Aldo Leopold
Image
If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left worth fighting for.
Aldo Leopold
Image
There is yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus' slave-girls, is still property. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.
Aldo Leopold
Image
A land ethic...reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity.
Aldo Leopold
Image
Relegating conservation to government is like relegating virtue to the Sabbath. Turns over to professionals what should be daily work of amateurs .
Aldo Leopold
Image
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
Image
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.
Aldo Leopold