297 Quotes by Aldo Leopold

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.

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.

The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.

Time was when education moved toward soil, not away from it.

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.

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.

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.

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

Only economists mistake physical opulence for riches.