I have purposely presented the land ethic as a product of social evolution because nothing so important as an ethic is ever 'written'… It evolves in the minds of a thinking community.

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

There is yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus' slave-girls, is still property. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.

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

Tell me of what plant-birthday a man takes notice, and I shall tell you a good deal about his vocation, his hobbies, his hay fever, and the general level of his ecological education.

For us in the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.