50 Best Aldo Leopold Quotes

One of the foremost environmental visionaries of his time, Aldo Leopold was admired by all for his views on nature and the ideal relationship mankind could have with it.

Leopold was so enchanted by the natural world as a child that in due course of time, he went on to become one of the most respected conservationists in the world. The thing that Aldo was most famous for happened to be a fabulous book on the relationship between man and nature called 'A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here And There'.

The book was formed of a manuscript that was originally a collection of essays that he penned toward the final years of his life. Aldo has taught us a lot about nature, for example his claim that "our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language" is a fascinating observation.  It was also Aldo who said, "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." He was talking about the land ethic, after all, talking about the moral responsibility to nature. Here's a list of more famous Aldo Leopold quotes that include 'Sand County Almanac' quotes. If you like these, do have a look at our Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quotes and Thoreau quotes.
 

These highly inspiring quotes by Aldo Leopold will surely get you feeling pumped. Perhaps his most famous inspiring quote is, "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." This quote is featured, amongst many others on our list.

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

-Aldo Leopold.

2. "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.

3. "To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."

-Aldo Leopold, 'Round River'.

4. "Teach the student to see the land, understand what he sees and enjoy what he understands."

-Aldo Leopold.

5. "When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver – He could plant a tree. 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."

-Aldo Leopold.

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

-Aldo Leopold.

7. "Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language."

-Aldo Leopold.

8. "It must be poor life that achieves freedom from fear."

-Aldo Leopold.

9. "We face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free."

-Aldo Leopold.

10. "It is, by common consent, a good thing for people to get back to nature. But wherein lies the goodness, and what can be done to encourage its pursuit?"

-Aldo Leopold.

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A select few inspiring quotes by Aldo on the topic of natural conservation.

11. "A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke, he is writing his signature on the face of the land."

-Aldo Leopold.

12. "The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, 'What good is it?' If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good whether we understand it or not."

-Aldo Leopold, 'Round River'.

13. "Man always kills the thing he loves. And so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to."

-Aldo Leopold.

14. "Conservation is not merely a thing to be enshrined in outdoor museums, but a way of living on land."

-Aldo Leopold.

15. "Conservation is a state of harmony between man and land."

-Aldo Leopold.

16. "Land is not merely soil, it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals."

-Aldo Leopold.

17. "The road to conservation is paved with good intentions that often prove futile, or even dangerous, due to a lack of understanding of either land or economic land use."

-Aldo Leopold.

18. "There can be no doubt that a society rooted in the soil is more stable than one rooted in pavements."

-Aldo Leopold.

19. "Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen, that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry."

-Aldo Leopold.

20. "Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest."

-Aldo Leopold.

Aldo Leopold shares his views through these intelligent observations, even including some quotes about wolves.

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

-Aldo Leopold.

22. "I was young then and full of trigger-itch. I thought that fewer wolves meant more deer, and that no wolves would mean hunter's paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view."

-Aldo Leopold.

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

-Aldo Leopold.

24. "To look into the eyes of a wolf is to see your own soul – hope you like what you see."

-Aldo Leopold.

25. "One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring."

-Aldo Leopold.

26. "Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf."

-Aldo Leopold.

27. "There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of those who cannot."

-Aldo Leopold.

28. "Our job is to sharpen our tools and make them cut the right way… The sole measure of our success is the effect which they have on the forest."

-Aldo Leopold, 'The River Of The Mother Of God'.

29. "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.

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

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These fantastic Aldo Leopold land ethic quotes capture his views on the topic very well. These quotes about ethical behaviour are really eye opening.

31. “A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience – and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity.”

-Aldo Leopold.

32. "All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise; that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soil, water, plants and animals, or collectively: the land."

-Aldo Leopold.

33. "It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value. By value, I of course mean something far broader than mere economic value; I mean value in the philosophical sense."

-Aldo Leopold.

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

-Aldo Leopold.

35. "A land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such."

-Aldo Leopold.

36. "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."

-Aldo Leopold.

37. "There is yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it."

-Aldo Leopold.

38. "The oldest task in human history – to live on a piece of land without spoiling it."

-Aldo Leopold.

39. "No important change in human conduct is ever accomplished without an internal change in our intellectual emphases, our loyalties, our affections, and our convictions. The proof that conservation has not yet touched these foundations of conduct lies in the fact that philosophy, ethics, and religion have not yet heard of it."

-Aldo Leopold.

40. "Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching – even when doing the wrong thing is legal."

-Aldo Leopold, 'The Sand County Almanac'.

Doing the right thing isn't always easy but these lines by Aldo will get you thinking regardless.

41. "The modern dogma is comfort at any cost."

-Aldo Leopold.

42. "For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun."

-Aldo Leopold.

43. "Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals."

-Aldo Leopold.

44. "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."

-Aldo Leopold.

45. "Once you learn to read the land, I have no fear of what you will do to it, or with it. And I know many pleasant things it will do to you."

-Aldo Leopold.

46. "It is part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it."

-Aldo Leopold.

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

-Aldo Leopold.

48. "Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another."

-Aldo Leopold.

49. "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."

-Aldo Leopold.

50. "We shall never achieve harmony with the land any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive."

-Aldo Leopold.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone at home to enjoy! If you liked reading through our Aldo Leopold quotes, then why not also take a look at our Transformation Tuesday quotes or Tool quotes?