Quotes from Aldo Leopold

Conservation viewed in its entirety, is the slow and laborious unfolding of a new relationship between people and land.

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

Mechanized recreation already has seized nine-tenths of the woods and mountains; a decent respect for minorities should dedicate the other tenth to wilderness.

Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another.

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

The first law of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts

The art of land doctoring is being practiced with vigor, but the science of land health is yet to be born.

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.

There can be no doubt that a society rooted in the soil is more stable than one rooted in pavements.

Individual 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.

It must be poor life that achieves freedom from fear.

The life of every river sings its own song, but in most the song is long marred by the discords of misuse.

The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.

We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness.

There is time not only to see who has done what, but to speculate why.

Time was when education moved toward soil, not away from it.

Recreational development is a job not of building roads into the lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.

Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers.

We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.

To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.

Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing.

I love all trees, but I am in love with pines.

O, God assist our side: at least, avoid assisting the enemy and leave the rest to me

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.