Quotes About Ecology

The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism.

The question is, does the educated citizen know he is only a cog in an ecological mechanism? That if he will work with that mechanism his mental wealth and his material wealth can expand indefinitely? But that if he refuses to work with it, it will ultimately grind him to dust? If education does not teach us these things, then what is education for?

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.

What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked.

it is disquieting to feel that the conversion into a National Forest or Park always means the esthetic death of a piece of wild country.

there are two kinds of people: those who can live without wild things & those who cannot.

During every week from April to September there are, on the average, ten wild plants coming into first bloom.

One of the penalties of an ecological education, is that one lives alone in a world of wounds." Aldo Leopold (although I would personally strike out 'alone', thankfully)

Above all we should, in the century since Darwin, have come to know that man, while now captain of the adventuring ship, is hardly the sole object of its quest, and that his prior assumptions to this effect arose from the simple necessity of whistling in the dark.

To love what was is a new thing under the sun, unknown to most people and to all pigeons.

That man is, in fact, only a member of a biotic team is shown by an ecological interpretation of history. Many historical events, hitherto explained solely in . terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land.

There is a peculiar virtue in the music of elusive birds.

Um dos castigos impostos por uma educação ecológica é viver solitariamente em um mundo ferido. Para um leigo, muitos dos danos causados à Terra são invisíveis. Um ecologista deve se embrutecer e fazer de conta que não tem nada a ver com as consequências da ciência, ou deve ser como um médico que vê marcas da morte em uma comunidade que acredita estar saudável e não quer ser convencida do contrário.

Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals.

I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?

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

Kids born today will see us navigate past the first greatest test of humanity, which is: can we actually be smart enough to live on a planet without destroying it?

Every other civilized nation in the world has been compelled to care for its forests, and so must we if waste and destruction are not to go on to the bitter end, leaving America as barren as Palestine or Spain.

Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet.