Top Aldo Leopold Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Aldo Leopold Biography

Aldo Leopold (January 11, 1887 – April 21, 1948) was an American author, philosopher, scientist, ecologist, forester, conservationist, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac (1949), which has sold more than two million copies.

Read about Aldo Leopold in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Aldo Leopold Quotes

The hope of the future lies not in curbing the influence of human occupancy - it is already too late for that - but in creating a better understanding of the extent of that influence and a new ethic for its governance.

Creating, Future, Governance, Lying, Understanding

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.

Conservationist, Face, Land, Signatures, Writing

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

Blind, Fear, One Thing, See, Thing

We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau's dictum: In wilderness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.

Dictum, Life, Men, Run, Running, Safety

It is in midwinter that I sometimes glean from my pines. . . a curious transfusion of courage.

Courage, Curious, Glean, Midwinter, Sometimes, Transfusion

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

Blank, Imagination, Map, Nature, Place, Travel

Conservationists have, I fear, adopted the pedagogical method of the prophets: we mutter darkly about impending doom if people don't mend their ways. The doom is impending, all right; no one can be an ecologist, even an amateur one, without seeing it. But do people mend their ways for fear of calamity? I doubt it. They are more likely to do it out of pure curiosity and interest.

Curiosity, Doubt, Mend, Method, Pedagogical, People

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

Good Life, Life, Music, Perceive, Perception, Rivers

For unnumbered centuries of human history the wilderness has given way. The priority of industry has become dogma. Are we as yet sufficiently enlightened to realize that we must now challenge that dogma, or do without our wilderness? Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?

Centuries, Challenges, Master, Priorities, Priority, Way

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.

Causes, Change, Mind, Record, Records

. . . to any one for whom wild things are something more than a pleasant diversion, (conservation) constitutes one of the milestones in moral evolution.

Conservation, Diversion, Evolution, Moral, Things

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

Examine, Expedient, Land Use, Right, Term, Wells

Conservation is a positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely a negative exercise of abstinence and caution.

Exercise, Insight, Negative, Skill, Skills

A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct

Ethics, Hunter, Hunters, Hunting, Peculiar

Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides, but they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history, to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.

Atoms, Faster, Land, Suffice, Tasks

Hemispheric solidarity is new among statesmen, but not among the feathered navies of the sky.

Feathered, Hemispheric, Navy, Sky, Solidarity

That the situation appears hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.

Hopeless, Prevent, Should, Situation

If the land mechanism as a whole is good then every part is good, whether we understand it or not.

Cogs, Good, Land, Mechanism, Part, Tinkering

The real jewel of my disease-ridden woodlot is the prothonotary warbler. . . . The flash of his gold-and-blue plumage amid the dank decay of the June woods is in itself proof that dead trees are transmuted into living animals, and vice versa.

Animal, June, Real, Transmuted, Woodlot

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

Doe, Geese, Spring, Summer, Swallow

1