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Only economists mistake physical opulence for riches.

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
Economist
Riches
Physical
Mistake
Opulence
Economists

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Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.
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To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.
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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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Every region should retain representative samples of its original or wilderness condition, to serve science as a sample of normality. Just as doctors must study healthy people to understand disease, so must the land sciences study the wilderness to understand disorders of the land-mechanism.
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In that year [1865] John Muir offered to buy from his brother ... a sanctuary for the wildflowers that had gladdened his youth. His brother declined to part with the land, but he could not suppress the idea: 1865 still stands in Wisconsin history as the birth-year of mercy for things natural, wild, and free.
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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.
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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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Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?
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An Ecologist lives in a world of wounds.
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There are idle spots on every farm, and every highway is bordered by an idle strip as long as it is keep cow, plow, and mower out of these idle spots, and the full native flora, plus dozens of interesting stowaways from foreign parts, could be part of the normal environment of every citizen.
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A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of his land.
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It is in midwinter that I sometimes glean from my pines... a curious transfusion of courage.
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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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The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.
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Wildflower corners are easy to maintain, but once gone, they are hard to rebuild.
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We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.
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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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No matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows, one can never learn all the salient facts about any one of them.
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We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness.
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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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