We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.
Aldo LeopoldWe 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.
Aldo LeopoldTo those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.
Aldo LeopoldI 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.
Aldo LeopoldThe government tells us we need flood control and comes to straighten the creek in our pasture. The engineer on the job tells us the creek is now able to carry off more flood water, but in the process we have lost our old willows where the owl hooted on a winter night and under which the cows switched flies in the noon shade. We lost the little marshy spot where our fringed gentians bloomed.
Aldo Leopold