When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver: He could plant a tree. … - Aldo Leopold

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Military school was great and especially great for leadership and then I spent two years in Vietnam.

Aldo Leopold

When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver: He could plant a tree. And when the axe was invented, he became a taker: He could chop it down. Whoever owns land has thus assumed, whether he knows it or not, the divine functions of creating and destroying plants.

Creating, Invented, Land, Plants, Taker, Tree

Same Author Quotes

Tell me of what plant-birthday a man takes notice, and I shall tell you a good deal about his vocation, his hobbies, his hay fever, and the general level of his ecological education.

Deal, Fever, General, Hay Fever, Hobbies, Men

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.

Doctors, Healthy, Land, Original, People, Region

Our remnants of wilderness will yield bigger values to the nation's character and health than they will to its pocketbook, and to destroy them will be to admit that the latter are the only values that interest us.

Admit, Bigger, Character, Health, Wilderness, Yield

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. . . . Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.

Blessing, Healthy, Hypochondriac, Lying, Nothing, Stage

Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.

Conservation, Enough, Howl, Long, Mountain