Quote

There are degrees and kinds of solitude. I know of no solitude so secure as one guarded by a spring flood nor do the geese, who have seen more kinds and degrees of aloneness than I have.

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
Kinds
Degrees
Spring
Aloneness
Seen
Geese
Kind
Guarded
Flood
Secure
Solitude

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Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.
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Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.
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In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries no man can ignore all of them.
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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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Having to squeeze the last drop of utility out of the land has the same desperate finality as having to chop up the furniture to keep warm.
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There are two things that interest me: the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to land.
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Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching- even when doing the wrong thing is legal.
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I shall now confess to you that none of those three trout had to be beheaded, or folded double, to fit their casket. What was big was not the trout, but the chance. What was full was not my creel, but my memory.
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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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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.
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To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste to others, the most valuable part.
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Like all real treasures of the mind, perception can be split into infinitely small fractions without losing its quality. The weeds in a city lot convey the same lesson as the redwoods the farmer may see in his cow-pasture what may not be vouchsafed to the scientist adventuring in the South Seas.
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If in a city we had six vacant lots available to the youngsters of a certain neighborhood for playing ball, it might be development to build houses on the first, and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and even the fifth, but when we build houses on the last one, we forget what houses are for.
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Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow... the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible.
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The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.
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Wilderness is the very stuff America is made of.
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The life of every river sings its own song, but in most the song is long marred by the discords of misuse.
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Our remnants of wilderness will yield bigger values to the nation's character and health than they will to its pocketbook, and to destroy them will be to admit that the latter are the only values that interest us.
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It must be poor life that achieves freedom from fear.
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