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All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.

Aldo Leopold

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Aldo Leopold
Age: 60 †
Born: 1887
Born: January 1
Died: 1948
Died: January 1
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Botanical Collector
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Burlington
Iowa
Aldo Starker Leopold
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Tell me of what plant-birthday a man takes notice, and I shall tell you a good deal about his vocation, his hobbies, his hay fever, and the general level of his ecological education.
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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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There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.
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The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.
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But wherever the truth may lie, this much is crystal-clear: our bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy. . . . Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.
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What a dull world if we knew all about geese!
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The first law of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts
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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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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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Once you learn to read the land, I have no fear of what you will do to it, or with it. And I know many pleasant things it will do to you.
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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.
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Ideas, like men, can become dictators. We Americans have so far escaped regimentation by our rulers, but have we escaped regimentation by our own ideas? I doubt if there exists today a more complete regimentation of the human mind than that accomplished by our self-imposed doctrine of ruthless utilitarianism.
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For us in the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.
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It must be poor life that achieves freedom from fear.
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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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A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct
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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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Mechanized recreation already has seized nine-tenths of the woods and mountains a decent respect for minorities should dedicate the other tenth to wilderness.
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Every farm woodland, in addition to yielding lumber, fuel and posts, should provide its owner a liberal education. This crop of wisdom never fails, but it is not always harvested.
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For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun.
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