Aldo Leopold Quotes

Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient.

Every farm woodland, in addition to yielding lumber, fuel and posts, should provide its owner a liberal education. This crop of wisdom never fails, but it is not always harvested.

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

Wildlife administration, in this respect, is not yet a profession.

Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?

Two things hold promise of improving those lights. One is to apply science to land-use. The other is to cultivate a love of country a little less spangled with stars, and a little more imbued with that respect for mother-earth - the lack of which is, to me, the outstanding attribute of the machine-age.

There are two things that interest me: the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to land.

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.

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

All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.

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

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.

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

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

I 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.

The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills. They represented complete freedom to make mistakes. The wilderness gave those rewards and penalties, for wise and foolish acts against which civilization has built a thousand buffers.

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.

Wilderness is a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two weeks' pack trip, and kept devoid of roads, artificial trails, cottages, or other works of man.

No one would rather hunt woodcock in October than I, but since learning of the sky dance I find myself calling one or two birds enough. I must be sure that, come April, there be no dearth of dancers in the sunset sky.

He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance.

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

He who hopes for spring with upturned eye never sees so small a thing as Draba. He who despairs of spring with downcast eye steps on it, unknowing. He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance.