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We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.

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
Respect
Preservation
Environment
Commodity
Conserving
Land
Preserves
Wildlife
Community
Wilderness
Ecology
Natural
Abuse
Sustainability
Nature
Environmental
Conservation
Regard
Belonging
Green
Pollution

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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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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Wilderness, then, assumes unexpected importance as a laboratory for the study of land - health.
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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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The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.
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He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance.
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Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.
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The rich diversity of the world's cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.
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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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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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Conservation is a positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely a negative exercise of abstinence and caution.
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The richest values of wilderness lie not in the days of Daniel Boone, nor even in the present, but rather in the future.
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There is value in any experience that exercises those ethical restraints collectively called sportsmanship.
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One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.
Aldo Leopold
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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
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The real jewel of my disease-ridden woodlot is the prothonotary warbler. ... The flash of his gold-and-blue plumage amid the dank decay of the June woods is in itself proof that dead trees are transmuted into living animals, and vice versa.
Aldo Leopold
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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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There is, as yet, no sense of pride in the husbandry of wild plants and animals, no sense of shame in the proprietorship of a sick landscape. We tilt windmills in behalf of conservation in convention halls and editorial offices, but on the back forty we disclaim even owning a lance.
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Never did we plan the morrow, for we had learned that in the wilderness some new and irresistible distraction is sure to turn up each day before breakfast. Like the river, we were free to wander.
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A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
Aldo Leopold