Quote

. . . perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a wild river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in singing waters . . . glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.

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
Water
Glad
Canoeing
Young
Rivers
Canoe
Without
Missing
Grandson
Country
Singing
Waters
Never
Perhaps
River
Shall
Wild
Seen
Environmental
Chance
Miss
Grandsons

More quotes by 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.
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Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism.
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Hemispheric solidarity is new among statesmen, but not among the feathered navies of the sky.
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Prudence never kindled a fire in the human mind I have no hope for conservation born of fear.
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We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses
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I love all trees, but I am in love with pines.
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In wildness is the salvation of the world.
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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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Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.
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Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.
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Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another.
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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.
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Only economists mistake physical opulence for riches.
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Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.
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We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.
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Only the most uncritical minds are free from doubt.
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When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver: He could plant a tree. And when the axe was invented, he became a taker: He could chop it down. Whoever owns land has thus assumed, whether he knows it or not, the divine functions of creating and destroying plants.
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We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness.
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Agricultural science is largely a race between the emergence of new pests and the emergence of new techniques for their control.
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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.
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