297 Quotes by Aldo Leopold

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.

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.

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

What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?

O, God assist our side: at least, avoid assisting the enemy and leave the rest to me

There are some of us who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese or wild flowers is a right as inalienable as free speech.

What a dull world if we knew all about geese!

We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.

How like fish we are: ready, nay eager, to seize upon whatever new thing some wind of circumstance shakes down upon the river of time! And how we rue our haste, finding the gilded morsel to contain a hook!