Book detail: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238) is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
Aldo Leopold's 'A Sand County Almanac' is a seminal work in the field of conservation and ecology, offering insights into the natural world and the human relationship with it. This collection also includes Leopold's other writings, providing a comprehensive view of his thoughts on environmental stewardship and the importance of preserving natural habitats.
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“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.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“When I call to mind my earliest impressions, I wonder whether the process ordinarily referred to as growing up is not actually a process of growing down; whether experience, so much touted among adults as the thing children lack, is not actually a progressive dilution of the essentials by the trivialities of living.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness heaven; one may never get there.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“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.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“In that year [1865] John Muir offered to buy from his brother ... a sanctuary for the wildflowers that had gladdened his youth. His brother declined to part with the land, but he could not suppress the idea: 1865 still stands in Wisconsin history as the birth-year of mercy for things natural, wild, and free.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“Teach the student to see the land, understand what he sees, and enjoy what he understands.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“Prudence never kindled a fire in the human mind; I have no hope for conservation born of fear.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“...to any one for whom wild things are something more than a pleasant diversion, (conservation) constitutes one of the milestones in moral evolution.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“Two things hold promise of improving those lights. One is to apply science to land-use. The other is to cultivate a love of country a little less spangled with stars, and a little more imbued with that respect for mother-earth - the lack of which is, to me, the outstanding attribute of the machine-age.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“There are men charged with the duty of examining the construction of the plants, animals, and soils which are the instruments of the great orchestra. These men are called professors. Each selects one instrument and spends his life taking it apart and describing its strings and sounding boards. This process of dismemberment is called research. The place for dismemberment is called a university.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“That dark laboratory we call the soil.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“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.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“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.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“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.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“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.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“The rich diversity of the world's cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“I do not imply that this philosophy of land was always clear to me. It is rather the end result of a life journey.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“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.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“The art of land doctoring is being practiced with vigor, but the science of land
health is yet to be born.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“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.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization. Wilderness was never a homogenous raw material. It was very diverse. The differences in the product are known as cultures. The rich diversity of the worlds cultures reflects a corresponding diversity. In the wilds that gave them birth.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“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.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow... the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“Thus far we have considered the problem of conservation of land purely as an economic issue. A false front of exclusively economic determinism is so habitual to Americans in discussing public questions that one must speak in the language of compound interest to get a hearing.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“We console ourselves with the comfortable fallacy that a single museum piece will do, ignoring the clear dictum of history that a species must be saved in many places if it is to be saved at all.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“The life of every river sings its own song, but in most the song is long marred by the discords of misuse.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“Too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“One of the anomalies of modern ecology is the creation of two groups, each of which seems barely aware of the existence of the other. The one studies the human community, almost as if it were a separate entity, and calls its findings sociology, economics and history. The other studies the plant and animal community and comfortably relegates the hodge-podge of politics to the liberal arts. The inevitable fusion of these two lines of thought will, perhaps, constitute the outstanding advance of this century.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“The most important characteristic of an organism is that capacity for internal self-renewal known as health. There are two organisms whose processes of self-renewal have been subjected to human interference and control. One of these is man himself (medicine and public health). The other is land (agriculture and coservation). The effort to control the health of land has not been very successful.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)