Quote

I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush and it is the same river who before I can bring my friends to view his work erases it forever from human view. After that it exists only in my mind's eye.

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
Forever
River
Wandering
Friends
Exists
Deer
Eye
Rivers
Brush
Human
Except
Viewed
Humans
View
Erase
Work
Painting
Brushes
Erases
Mind
Views
Seldom
Wields
Bring
Wander
Evanescent

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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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The first law of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts
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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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Bread and beauty grow best together. Their harmonious integration can make farming not only a business but an art the land not only a food-factory but an instrument for self-expression, on which each can play music to his own choosing.
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When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may see it with love and respect. - Perhaps such a shift of values can be achieved by reappraising things unnatural, tame, and confined in terms of things natural, wild, and free.
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To those who know the speech of hills and rivers straightening a stream is like shipping vagrants—a very successful method of passing trouble from one place to the next. It solves nothing in any collective sense.
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Teach the student to see the land, understand what he sees, and enjoy what he understands.
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The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism.
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The worthiness of any cause is not measured by its clean record, but by its readiness to see the blots when they are pointed out, and to change its mind.
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If the land mechanism as a whole is good then every part is good, whether we understand it or not.
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This whole effort to rebuild and stabilize a countryside is not without its disappointments and mistakes... What matter though these temporary growing pains when one can cast his eye upon the hills and see hard-boiled farmers who have spent their lives destroying land now carrying water by hand to their new plantations
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Wilderness is the very stuff America is made of.
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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.
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Conservation is a positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely a negative exercise of abstinence and caution.
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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.
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The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.
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Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.
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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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I do not imply that this philosophy of land was always clear to me. It is rather the end result of a life journey.
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The sweetest hunts are stolen. To steal a hunt, either go far into the wilderness where no one has been, or else find some undiscovered place under everybody's nose
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