Quotes by Aldo Leopold
“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
“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
“The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.”— Aldo Leopold
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”— Aldo Leopold
“Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.”— Aldo Leopold
“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
“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
“Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.”— Aldo Leopold
“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, 'What good is it?'”— Aldo Leopold