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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.

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
Things
Idea
John
Muir
Natural
Mercy
Declined
History
Birth
Wisconsin
Stills
Youth
Suppress
Part
Brother
Sanctuary
Still
Land
Offered
Ideas
Year
Stands
Years
Free
Wild
Gladdened

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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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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Man brings all things to the test of himself, and this is notably true of lightning.
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In wildness is the salvation of the world.
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Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?
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Conservation viewed in its entirety, is the slow and laborious unfolding of a new relationship between people and land.
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No one would rather hunt woodcock in October than I, but since learning of the sky dance I find myself calling one or two birds enough. I must be sure that, come April, there be no dearth of dancers in the sunset sky.
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Wilderness, then, assumes unexpected importance as a laboratory for the study of land - health.
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Relegating conservation to government is like relegating virtue to the Sabbath. Turns over to professionals what should be daily work of amateurs .
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Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing.
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We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness.
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We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.
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What conservation education must build is an ethical underpinning for land economics and a universal curiosity to understand the land mechanism. Conservation may then follow.
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Wilderness is the very stuff America is made of.
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Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.
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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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O, God assist our side: at least, avoid assisting the enemy and leave the rest to me
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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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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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On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh.
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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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