Aldo Leopold

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land…

— Aldo Leopold

Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful…

— Aldo Leopold

Like all real treasures of the mind, perception can be split into infinitely small fractions without losing its quality. The weeds in…

— Aldo Leopold

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, the stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong…

— Aldo Leopold

The real jewel of my disease-ridden woodlot is the prothonotary warbler. ... The flash of his gold-and-blue plumage amid the dank decay…

— Aldo Leopold

In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of…

— Aldo Leopold

Never did we plan the morrow, for we had learned that in the wilderness some new and irresistible distraction is sure to…

— Aldo Leopold

There is, as yet, no sense of pride in the husbandry of wild plants and animals, no sense of shame in the…

— Aldo Leopold

The sweetest hunts are stolen. To steal a hunt, either go far into the wilderness where no one has been, or else…

— Aldo Leopold

Agricultural science is largely a race between the emergence of new pests and the emergence of new techniques for their control.

— Aldo Leopold

“Getting up too early is a vice habitual in horned owls, stars, geese, and freight trains. Some hunters acquire it from geese,…

— Aldo Leopold

We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness.

— Aldo Leopold

“...it is disquieting to feel that the conversion into a National Forest or Park always means the esthetic death of a piece…

— Aldo Leopold

Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets. To plant a pine, one need only own a shovel.

— Aldo Leopold

Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness heaven; one may never get there.

— Aldo Leopold

“We forest officers, who acquiesced in the extinguishment of the bear, knew a local rancher who had plowed up a dagger engraved…

— Aldo Leopold

We realize the indivisibility of the earth - its soil, mountains, rivers, forests, climate, plants, and animals - and respect it collectively…

— Aldo Leopold

Once you learn to read the land, I have no fear of what you will do to it, or with it. And…

— Aldo Leopold

I love all trees, but I am in love with pines.

— Aldo Leopold

“In the narrow thread of sod between the shaved banks and the toppling fences grow the relics of what once was Illinois…

— Aldo Leopold

“Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow... creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is…

— Aldo Leopold

Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command…

— Aldo Leopold

“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…

— Aldo Leopold

“I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain,…

— Aldo Leopold

The whole conflict thus boils down to a question of degree. We of the minority see a law of diminishing returns in…

— Aldo Leopold