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The whole conflict thus boils down to a question of degree. We of the minority see a law of diminishing returns in progress our opponents do not.

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
Progress
Minority
Question
Minorities
Law
Opponents
Whole
Degree
Thus
Degrees
Boils
Conflict
Diminishing
Return
Returns

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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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Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.
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O, God assist our side: at least, avoid assisting the enemy and leave the rest to me
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We face the question whether a still higher standard of living is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free.
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The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?
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No farmer-sportsman group is stronger than the ties of mutual confidence and enthusiasm which bind its members.
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Only economists mistake physical opulence for riches.
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I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.
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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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Your woodlot is, in fact, an historical document which faithfully records your personal philosophy.
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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.
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The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills. They represented complete freedom to make mistakes. The wilderness gave those rewards and penalties, for wise and foolish acts against which civilization has built a thousand buffers.
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We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.
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Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree - and there will be one.
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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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If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left, in my opinion, worth fighting for or to be more exact, a completely industrialized United States is of no consequence to me.
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In wildness is the salvation of the world.
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In our attempt to make conservation easy, we have made it trivial.
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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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Patriotism requires less and less of making the eagle scream, but more and more of making him think.
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