Best Quotes by Aldo Leopold (Top 10)

  1. There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.
  2. There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.
  3. 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.
  4. One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.
  5. Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching- even when doing the wrong thing is legal.
  6. To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.
  7. The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?
  8. Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.
  9. 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
  10. Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.

More Aldo Leopold Quotes