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The worthiness of any cause is not measured by its clean record, but by its readiness to see the blots when they are pointed out, and to change its mind.

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
Clean
Record
Cause
Records
Blots
Causes
Worthiness
Change
Readiness
Mind
Pointed
Measured

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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Man brings all things to the test of himself, and this is notably true of lightning.
Aldo Leopold
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Is it possible to preserve the element of Unknown Places in our national life? Is it practicable to do so, without undue loss in economic values? I say 'yes' to both questions. But we must act vigorously and quickly, before the remaining bits of wilderness have disappeared.
Aldo Leopold
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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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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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Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays.
Aldo Leopold
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How like fish we are: ready, nay eager, to seize upon whatever new thing some wind of circumstance shakes down upon the river of time! And how we rue our haste, finding the gilded morsel to contain a hook!
Aldo Leopold
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Wilderness is the very stuff America is made of.
Aldo Leopold
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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.
Aldo Leopold
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The good life of any river may depend on the perception of its music and the preservation of some music to perceive.
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One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.
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This whole effort to rebuild and stabilize a countryside is not without its disappointments and mistakes... What matter though these temporary growing pains when one can cast his eye upon the hills and see hard-boiled farmers who have spent their lives destroying land now carrying water by hand to their new plantations
Aldo Leopold
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An oak is no respecter of persons.
Aldo Leopold
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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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O, God assist our side: at least, avoid assisting the enemy and leave the rest to me
Aldo Leopold
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The richest values of wilderness lie not in the days of Daniel Boone, nor even in the present, but rather in the future.
Aldo Leopold
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Hemispheric solidarity is new among statesmen, but not among the feathered navies of the sky.
Aldo Leopold
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There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.
Aldo Leopold
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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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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.
Aldo Leopold
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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.
Aldo Leopold