Aldo Leopold Quotes

The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations — Aldo Leopold

Man brings all things to the test of himself, and this is notably true of lightning. — Aldo Leopold

It is in midwinter that I sometimes glean from my pines ... a curious transfusion of courage. — Aldo Leopold

Only the most uncritical minds are free from doubt. — Aldo Leopold

We face the question whether a still higher "standard of living" is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. — Aldo Leopold

One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring. — Aldo Leopold

Conservation is a positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely a negative exercise of abstinence and caution. — Aldo Leopold

Hemispheric solidarity is new among statesmen, but not among the feathered navies of the sky. — Aldo Leopold

Your woodlot is, in fact, an historical document which faithfully records your personal philosophy. — Aldo Leopold

Wilderness, then, assumes unexpected importance as a laboratory for the study of land - health. — Aldo Leopold

The modern dogma is comfort at any cost. — Aldo Leopold

At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant. — Aldo Leopold

Land is not merely soil, it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals. — Aldo Leopold

There is time not only to see who has done what, but to speculate why. — Aldo Leopold

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. — Aldo Leopold

Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest. — Aldo Leopold

What the youth needs to be told is that a ship is a-building in his own mental dry dock, a ship with freedom of the seas. — Aldo Leopold

No farmer-sportsman group is stronger than the ties of mutual confidence and enthusiasm which bind its members. — Aldo Leopold

The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it. — Aldo Leopold

O, God assist our side: at least, avoid assisting the enemy and leave the rest to me — Aldo Leopold

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

Keeping records enhances the pleasure of the search and the chance of finding order and meaning in these events. — Aldo Leopold

Recreational development is a job not of building roads into the lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind. — Aldo Leopold

A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of the land. — Aldo Leopold

The most fun lies in seeing and studying the unknown. — Aldo Leopold

Six days shalt thou paddle and pack, but on the seventh thou shall wash thy socks. — Aldo Leopold

Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? — Aldo Leopold

I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness. — Aldo Leopold

What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map? — Aldo Leopold

The boundary between tame and wild exists only in the imperfections of the human mind. — Aldo Leopold

We grieve only for what we know. — Aldo Leopold

A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct — Aldo Leopold

The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. — Aldo Leopold

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. — Aldo Leopold

Only economists mistake physical opulence for riches. — Aldo Leopold

Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness heaven; one may never get there. — Aldo Leopold

What a dull world if we knew all about geese! — Aldo Leopold

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization. — Aldo Leopold

Land health is the capacity for self-renewal in the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise the land. — Aldo Leopold

Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another. — Aldo Leopold

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. — Aldo Leopold

Wildflower corners are easy to maintain, but once gone, they are hard to rebuild. — Aldo Leopold

I love all trees, but I am in love with pines. — Aldo Leopold

To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part. — Aldo Leopold

Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. — Aldo Leopold

Relegating conservation to government is like relegating virtue to the Sabbath. Turns over to professionals what should be daily work of amateurs . — Aldo Leopold

No important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal chage in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions. — Aldo Leopold

The life of every river sings its own song, but in most the song is long marred by the discords of misuse. — Aldo Leopold

I am convinced that most Americans of the new generation have no idea what a decent forest looks like. The only way to tell them is to show them. — Aldo Leopold

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. — Aldo Leopold

It is part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it. — Aldo Leopold

Wilderness is the very stuff America is made of. — Aldo Leopold

Too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run, — Aldo Leopold

To look into the eyes of a wolf is to see your own soul - hope you like what you see. — Aldo Leopold

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. — Aldo Leopold

The rich diversity of the world's cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth. — Aldo Leopold

Prudence never kindled a fire in the human mind; I have no hope for conservation born of fear. — Aldo Leopold

To build a road is so much simpler than to think of what the country really needs. — Aldo Leopold

The good life of any river may depend on the perception of its music; and the preservation of some music to perceive. — Aldo Leopold

In country, as in people, a plain exterior often conceals
hidden riches, to perceive which requires much living in and with. — Aldo Leopold

In our attempt to make conservation easy, we have made it trivial. — Aldo Leopold

Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals. — Aldo Leopold

Never had there been so rare a day, or so rich a solitude top spend it in. — Aldo Leopold

A river or stream is a cycle of energy from sun to plants to insects to fish. It is a continuum broken only by humans. — Aldo Leopold

That the situation appears hopeless should not prevent us from doing our
best. — Aldo Leopold

Teach the student to see the land, understand what he sees, and enjoy what he understands. — Aldo Leopold

The whole conflict thus boils down to a question of degree. We of the minority see a law of diminishing returns in progress; our opponents do not. — Aldo Leopold

There can be no doubt that a society rooted in the soil is more stable than
one rooted in pavements. — Aldo Leopold

Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching- even when doing the wrong thing is legal. — Aldo Leopold

We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses — Aldo Leopold

It must be poor life that achieves freedom from fear. — Aldo Leopold

We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in. — Aldo Leopold

Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow ... creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible. — Aldo Leopold

An oak is no respecter of persons. — Aldo Leopold

It is, by common consent, a good thing for people to get back to nature. — Aldo Leopold

Obligations have no meaning without conscience, and the problem we face is the extension of the social conscience from people to the land — Aldo Leopold

That dark laboratory we call the soil. — Aldo Leopold

In wildness is the salvation of the world, — Aldo Leopold

Agricultural science is largely a race between the emergence of new pests and the emergence of new techniques for their control. — Aldo Leopold

They know no urge of seasons; they feel no kiss of sun, no lash of wind and weather. They live forever by not living at all. — Aldo Leopold

Camp-keeping in the Delta was not all beer and skittles. — Aldo Leopold

To any one for whom wild things are something more than a pleasant diversion, (conservation) constitutes one of the milestones in moral evolution. — Aldo Leopold

If the land mechanism as a whole is good then every part is good, whether we understand it or not ... — Aldo Leopold

Conservation viewed in its entirety, is the slow and laborious unfolding of a new relationship between people and land. — Aldo Leopold

The landscape of any farm is the owner's portrait of himself. — Aldo Leopold

Patriotism requires less and less of making the eagle scream, but more and more of making him think. — Aldo Leopold

Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf. — Aldo Leopold

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. — Aldo Leopold

For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun. — Aldo Leopold

I do not imply that this philosophy of land was always clear to me. It is rather the end result of a life journey. — Aldo Leopold