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Aldo Leopold

119 quotes

• “Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: A Man's Leisure Time," 1920; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 8.

• “Six days shalt thou paddle and pack, but on the seventh thou shall wash thy socks.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Canada, 1924"; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 54.

• “Our new camp is on a windswept rock point. … We don't know what lake we're on, and don't care ...”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Canada, 1925"; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 67.

• “Many of the attributes most distinctive of America and Americans are the impress of the wilderness. … Shall we now exterminate this thing that made us Americans?”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Wilderness as a Form of Land Use" [1925]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 137-138.

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

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: A Plea for Wilderness Hunting Grounds" [1925]; Published in Aldo Leopold's Southwest, David E. Brown and Neil B. Carmony (eds.) 1990, p. 160.

• “Conservation is not merely a thing to be enshrined in outdoor museums, but a way of living on land.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Game Cropping in Southern Wisconsin", Our Native Landscape; Published by "The Friends of Our Native Landscape," October 1927.

• “Patriotism requires less and less of making the eagle scream, but more and more of making him think.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Home Builder Conserves" [1928]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 147.

• “What to do? I see only two courses open to the likes of us. One is to go live on locusts in the wilderness, if there is any wilderness left. The other is surreptitiously to set up within the economic Juggernaut certain new cogs and wheels whereby the residual love of nature, inherent even in Rotarians, may be made to recreate at least a fraction of those values which their love of "progress" is destroying. A briefer way to put it is: if we want Mr. Babbitt to rebuild outdoor America, we must let him use the same tools wherewith he destroyed it. He knows no other.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Game and Wild Life Conservation" [1932]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 165-166.

• “What more delightful avocation than to take a piece of land and, by cautious experimentation, to prove how it works? What more substantial service to conservation than to practice it on one's own land?”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Grand-Opera Game" [1932]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 172.

• “Bread and beauty grow best together. Their harmonious integration can make farming not only a business but an art; the land not only a food-factory but an instrument for self-expression, on which each can play music to his own choosing.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Conservation Ethic" [1933]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 191.

• “[After describing a hopper for feeding winter game:] If you think you're too old to enjoy building such contraptions — that only Boy Scouts get a kick out of such nonsense — just try it. You may end up by building several.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: radio talk "Feed Early to Keep Game at Home", 2 November 1933.

• “It can be stated as a sober fact that the iron-heel attitude has already reduced by half the ability of Wisconsin to support a cooperative community of men, animals, and plants during the next century. Moreover, it has saddled us with a repair bill, the magnitude of which we are just beginning to appreciate. If some foreign invader attempted such loot, the whole nation would resist to the last man and the last dollar. But as long as we loot ourselves, we charge the indignity to 'rugged individualism', and try to forget it.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Arboretum and the University" [1934]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 210.

• “Relegating conservation to government is like relegating virtue to the Sabbath. Turns over to professionals what should be daily work of amateurs.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Lecture notes ms. (c. 1935); as quoted in: Curt D. Meine, ‎Richard L. Knight (1999) The Essential Aldo Leopold: Quotations and Commentaries. p. 162.

• “We are touring the Ozarks. Here is an abandoned field in which the ragweed is sparse and short. Does this tell us anything about why the mortgage was foreclosed? About how long ago? Would this field be a good place to look for quail? Does short ragweed have any connection with the human story behind yonder graveyard? If all the ragweed in this watershed were short, would that tell us anything about the future of floods in the steam? About the future prospects for bass or trout?”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Natural History: The Forgotten Science" [1938]; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 62.

• “A profession is a body of men who voluntarily measure their work by a higher standard than their clients demand. To be professionally acceptable, a policy must be sound as well as salable. Wildlife administration, in this respect, is not yet a profession.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Chukaremia" [1938]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 246.

• “The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Engineering and Conservation" [1938]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 254.

• “Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. … Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Conservation" (c. 1938); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 145-146.

• “We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive. … 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 (1887–1948) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Conservation" (c. 1938); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 155.

• “What conservation education must build is an ethical underpinning for land economics and a universal curiosity to understand the land mechanism. Conservation may then follow.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Conservation" (c. 1938); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 157.

• “Ideas, like men, can become dictators. We Americans have so far escaped regimentation by our rulers, but have we escaped regimentation by our own ideas? I doubt if there exists today a more complete regimentation of the human mind than that accomplished by our self-imposed doctrine of ruthless utilitarianism.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Farmer as a Conservationist" [1939]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 259.

• “The landscape of any farm is the owner's portrait of himself.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Farmer as a Conservationist" [1939]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 263.

• “Wildflower corners are easy to maintain, but once gone, they are hard to rebuild.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Wildflower Corners" [1939]; Published in For the Health of the Land, J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle (eds.), 1999, p. 123.

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

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Hunting for sport is an improvement over hunting for food, in that there has been added to the test of skill and ethical code, which the hunter formulates for himself, and must live up to without the moral support of bystanders.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “No farmer-sportsman group is stronger than the ties of mutual confidence and enthusiasm which bind its members.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: History of the Riley Game Cooperative, 1931-1939" [1940]; Published in For the Health of the Land, J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle (eds.), 1999, p. 189.

• “Only economists mistake physical opulence for riches.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Country" [1941]; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 31.

• “There are those who are willing to be herded in droves through 'scenic' places; who find mountains grand if they be proper mountains, with waterfalls, cliffs, and lakes. To such the Kansas plains are tedious. They see the endless corn, but not the heave and grunt of ox teams breaking the prairie. History, for them, grows on campuses. They look at the low horizon, but they cannot see it, as de Vaca did, under the bellies of the buffalo.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Country" [1941]; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 32-33.

• “Any prairie farm can have a library of prairie plants, for they are drought-proof and fire-proof, and are content with any roadside, rocky knoll, or sandy hillside not needed for cow or plow. Unlike books, which divulge their meaning only when you dig for it, the prairie plants yearly repeat their story, in technicolor, from the first pale blooms of pasque in April to the wine-red plumes of bluestem in the fall. All but the blind may read, and gather from the reading new lessons in the meaning of America.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Roadside Prairies" [1941]; Published in For the Health of the Land, J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle (eds.), 1999, p. 138.

• “Every region should retain representative samples of its original or wilderness condition, to serve science as a sample of normality. Just as doctors must study healthy people to understand disease, so must the land sciences study the wilderness to understand disorders of the land-mechanism.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Planning for Wildlife" [1941]; Published in For the Health of the Land, J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle (eds.), 1999, p. 197.

• “How would you like to have a thousand brilliantly colored cliff swallows keeping house in the eaves of your barn, and gobbling up insects over your farm at the rate of 100,000 per day? There are many Wisconsin farmsteads where such a swallow-show is a distinct possibility.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Cliff Swallows to Order" [1944]; Published in For the Health of the Land, J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle (eds.), 1999, p. 119.

• “[This book] has done well to preserve this saga of how the state was made safe for cows. How the state is to be made safe from cows is a saga yet to be written.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Meet Mr. Grizzly by Montague Stevens" [1944]; Published in Aldo Leopold's Southwest, David E. Brown and Neil B. Carmony (eds.) 1990, p. 220.

• “I personally believed, at least in 1914 when predator control began, that there could not be too much horned game, and that the extirpation of predators was a reasonable price to pay for better big game hunting. Some of us have learned since the tragic error of such a view, and acknowledged our mistake. One must judge from the present volume that the Fish and Wildlife Service does not see any mistake.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of The Wolves of North America by Stanley P. Young and Edward A. Goldman" [1944]; Published in Aldo Leopold's Southwest, David E. Brown and Neil B. Carmony (eds.) 1990, p. 226.

• “That the situation is hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: letter to Bill Vogt, 21 January 1946, quoted in Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work, p. 478.

• “Once you learn to read the land, I have no fear of what you will do to it, or with it. And I know many pleasant things it will do to you.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Wherefore Wildlife Ecology?" [1947]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 337.

• “We speak glibly of conservation education, but what do we mean by it? If we mean indoctrination, then let us be reminded that it is just as easy to indoctrinate with fallacies as with facts. If we mean to teach the capacity for independent judgement, then I am appalled by the magnitude of the task.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Ecological Conscience" [1947]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 343.

• “The direction is clear, and the first step is to throw your weight around on matters of right and wrong in land-use. Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays. That philosophy is dead in human relations, and its funeral in land-relations is overdue.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Ecological Conscience" [1947]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 346.

• “If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left, in my opinion, worth fighting for; or to be more exact, a completely industrialized United States is of no consequence to me.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: letter to Wallace Grange, 3 January 1948.

• “That biological jack-of-all-trades called ecologist tries to be and do all these things. Needless to say, he does not succeed.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Deer Swath" [1948]; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 127.

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

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Round River: A Parable" (c. 1940-48); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 165.

• “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The whole conflict thus boils down to a question of degree. We of the minority see a law of diminishing returns in progress; our opponents do not.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the aesthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “But wherever the truth may lie, this much is crystal-clear: our bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To the mouse, snow means freedom from want and fear. … To a rough-legged hawk, a thaw means freedom from want and fear.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Man brings all things to the test of himself, and this is notably true of lightning.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “An oak is no respecter of persons.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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