Aldo Leopold Quotes
The art of land doctoring is being practiced with vigor, but the science of land health is yet to be born.
Teach the student to see the land, understand what he sees, and enjoy what he understands.
At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant.
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.
Patriotism requires less and less of making the eagle scream, but more and more of making him think.
Relegating conservation to government is like relegating virtue to the Sabbath. Turns over to professionals what should be daily work of amateurs .
It is part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it
In country, as in people, a plain exterior often conceals hidden riches, to perceive which requires much living in and with.
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.
All history consists of successive excursions from a single starting-point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values.
Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?
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.
I confess my own leisure to be spent entirely in search of adventure, without regard to prudence, profit, self improvement, learning, or any other serious thing.
Wilderness, then, assumes unexpected importance as a laboratory for the study of land - health.
The sweetest hunts are stolen. To steal a hunt, either go far into the wilderness where no one has been, or else find some undiscovered place under everybody's nose
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.
Keeping records enhances the pleasure of the search and the chance of finding order and meaning in these events.
We console ourselves with the comfortable fallacy that a single museum piece will do, ignoring the clear dictum of history that a species must be saved in many places if it is to be saved at all.
Prudence never kindled a fire in the human mind; I have no hope for conservation born of fear.
We shall never achieve harmony with the land, anymore than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.
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.
Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how.
It is part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it.
Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow... creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible.
Do not let anyone tell you that these people made work of play. They simply realized that the most fun lies in seeing and studying the unknown.
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.
Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.