Quote

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.

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
Built
Foolish
Simplicities
Thousand
Simplicity
Thrills
Wise
Rewards
Elemental
Mistake
Complete
Elementals
Freedom
Mistakes
Represented
Make
Travel
Penalties
Gave
Wilderness
Civilization
Acts

More quotes by Aldo Leopold

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A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
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What a dull world if we knew all about geese!
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If the land mechanism as a whole is good then every part is good, whether we understand it or not.
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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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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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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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What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?
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Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.
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No important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal chage in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions.
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Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest.
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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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Conservation is a positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely a negative exercise of abstinence and caution.
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There can be no doubt that a society rooted in the soil is more stable than one rooted in pavements.
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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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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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That the situation appears hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.
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Only economists mistake physical opulence for riches.
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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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The richest values of wilderness lie not in the days of Daniel Boone, nor even in the present, but rather in the future.
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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.
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