Aldo Leopold Quotes About Wilderness

Quotes about: Wilderness

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  We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

  Aldo Leopold

  Inspiring, Respect, Nature

  A Sand County Almanac foreword (1949)

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

  Aldo Leopold

  Beauty, Nature, Integrity

  A Sand County Almanac pt. 3 (1949)

• To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.

  Aldo Leopold

  Nature, Travel, Imagination

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.209, Library of America

• Man always kills the thing he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?

  Aldo Leopold

  Country, Men, Pioneers

  Aldo Leopold (1968). “A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There”, p.135, Oxford University Press

• I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.

  Aldo Leopold

  Nature, Environmental, Wilderness

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

  Aldo Leopold

  Maps, Wilderness, Blank

  Aldo Leopold (1968). “A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There”, p.135, Oxford University Press

• The richest values of wilderness lie not in the days of Daniel Boone, nor even in the present, but rather in the future.

  Aldo Leopold

  Lying, Wilderness, Values

• Never did we plan the morrow, for we had learned that in the wilderness some new and irresistible distraction is sure to turn up each day before breakfast. Like the river, we were free to wander.

  Aldo Leopold

  Rivers, Each Day, Breakfast

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.146, Oxford University Press, USA

• Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.

  Aldo Leopold

  Men, Civilization, Raw Materials

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.223, Library of America

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

  Aldo Leopold

  Impossible, Wilderness, Creation

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.234, Library of America

• We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau's dictum: In wilderness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.

  Aldo Leopold

  Life, Running, Men

  "A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There". Book by Aldo Leopold. Chapter "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain", p. 133, 1949.

• All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.

  Aldo Leopold

  Self, Wilderness, Cherish

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.101, Oxford University Press, USA

• 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.

  Aldo Leopold

  Character, Yield, Wilderness

  Aldo Leopold, David Earl Brown, Neil B. Carmony (1995). “Aldo Leopold's Southwest”, p.161, UNM Press

• We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.

  Aldo Leopold

  Respect, Nature, Community Living

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.8, Oxford University Press, USA

• The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills. They represented complete freedom to make mistakes. The wilderness gave those rewards and penalties, for wise and foolish acts against which civilization has built a thousand buffers.

  Aldo Leopold

  Wise, Mistake, Civilization

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.113, Oxford University Press, USA

• Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow. Invasions can be arrested or modified in a manner to keep an area usable either for recreation, science or for wildlife, but the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible. It follows, then, that any wilderness program is a rearguard action, through which retreats are reduced to a minimum.

  Aldo Leopold

  Invasion, Retreat, Wildlife

  Aldo Leopold (1968). “A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There”, p.175, Oxford University Press

• Mechanized recreation already has seized nine-tenths of the woods and mountains; a decent respect for minorities should dedicate the other tenth to wilderness.

  Aldo Leopold

  Mountain, Minorities, Woods

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.194, Oxford University Press, USA

• If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left worth fighting for.

  Aldo Leopold

  Fighting, Wilderness, Left

• For unnumbered centuries of human history the wilderness has given way. The priority of industry has become dogma. Are we as yet sufficiently enlightened to realize that we must now challenge that dogma, or do without our wilderness? Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?

  Aldo Leopold

  Priorities, Challenges, Might

  Aldo Leopold, David Earl Brown, Neil B. Carmony (1995). “Aldo Leopold's Southwest”, p.160, UNM Press

• I am asserting that those who love the wilderness should not be wholly deprived of it, that while the reduction of the wilderness has been a good thing, its extermination would be a very bad one, and that the conservation of wilderness is the most urgent and difficult of all the tasks that confront us, because there are no economic laws to help and many to hinder its accomplishment.

  Aldo Leopold

  Law, Accomplishment, Tasks

• 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.

  Aldo Leopold

  Fighting, United States, Opinion

  Letter to Wallace Grange, digicoll.library.wisc.edu. January 03, 1948.

• Is it possible to preserve the element of Unknown Places in our national life? Is it practicable to do so, without undue loss in economic values? I say 'yes' to both questions. But we must act vigorously and quickly, before the remaining bits of wilderness have disappeared.

  Aldo Leopold

  Loss, Economic Value, Elements

  Aldo Leopold, Susan Flader, J. Baird Callicott (1991). “The river of the mother of God and other essays”, Univ of Wisconsin Pr

• Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important.

  Aldo Leopold

  Humility, Land, Intellectual

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.200, Oxford University Press, USA

• 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.

  Aldo Leopold

  Land, Doctors, People

  Aldo Leopold (2012). “For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays And Other Writings”, p.197, Island Press

• The sweetest hunts are stolen. To steal a hunt, either go far into the wilderness where no one has been, or else find some undiscovered place under everybody's nose

  Aldo Leopold

  Noses, Wilderness, Stealing

  Aldo Leopold (1968). “A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There”, p.57, Oxford University Press

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