There are men charged with the duty of examining the construction of the plants, animals, and soils which are the instruments of the great orchestra. These men are called professors. Each selects one instrument and spends his life taking it apart and describing its strings and sounding boards. This process of dismemberment is called research. The place for dismemberment is called a university.
Aldo LeopoldIndividual 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 LeopoldTeach the student to see the land, understand what he sees, and enjoy what he understands.
Aldo LeopoldThe 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 LeopoldRecreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.
Aldo LeopoldI am asserting that those who love the wilderness should not be wholly deprived of it, that while the reduction of the wilderness has been a good thing, its extermination would be a very bad one, and that the conservation of wilderness is the most urgent and difficult of all the tasks that confront us, because there are no economic laws to help and many to hinder its accomplishment.
Aldo Leopold