quotes by Aldo Leopold

"There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot."
— Aldo Leopold

"Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."
— Aldo Leopold

"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."
— Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac)

"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."
— Aldo Leopold (Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold)

"A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of the land."
— Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac)

"The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of whom have forgotten there is any such thing as land, among whom education and culture have become almost synonymous with landlessness. This is the problem of conservation education."
— Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac)

"The modern dogma is comfort at any cost."
— Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac)

"Out of the clouds I hear a faint bark, as of a faraway dog. It is strange how the world cocks its ear to that sound, wondering. Soon it is louder: the honk of geese, invisible, but coming on.

The flock emerges from the low clouds, a tattered banner of birds, dipping and rising, blown up and blown down, blown together and blown apart, but advancing, the wind wrestling lovingly with each winnowing wing. When the flock is a blur in the far sky I hear the last honk, sounding taps for summer.

It is warm behind the driftwood now, for the wind has gone with the geese. So would I--if I were the wind."
— Aldo Leopold

"My favorite quote: The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land... In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such."
— Aldo Leopold

"What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?"
— Aldo Leopold

"I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness."
— Aldo Leopold

""On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh.""
— Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac)

"One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring. "
— Aldo Leopold

"Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map? "
— Aldo Leopold

"The good life of any river may depend on the perception of its music; and the preservation of some music to perceive."
— Aldo Leopold

"At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant."
— Aldo Leopold