Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. Aldo Leopold More Quotes by Aldo Leopold More Quotes From Aldo Leopold All history consists of successive excursions from a single starting-point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values. Aldo Leopold starting return men The only true development in American recreational resources is the development of the perceptive faculty in Americans. All of the other acts we grace by that name are, at best, attempts to retard or mask the process of dilution. Aldo Leopold development grace names Barring love and war, few enterprises are undertaken with such abandon, or by such diverse individuals, or with so paradoxical a mixture of appetite and altruism, as that group of avocations known as outdoor recreation. 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 war lying people Sometimes in June, when I see unearned dividends of dew hung on every lupine, I have doubts about the real poverty of the sands. On solvent farmlands lupines do not even grow, much less collect a daily rainbow of jewels. Aldo Leopold june real jewels The whole conflict thus boils down to a question of degree. We of the minority see a law of diminishing returns in progress; our opponents do not. Aldo Leopold opponents progress law I love all trees, but I am in love with pines. Aldo Leopold tree 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 land intellectual humility If education really educates, there will, in time, be more and more citizens who understand that relics of the old West add meaning and value to the new. Youth yet unborn will pole up the Missouri with Lewis and Clark, or climb the Sierras with James Capen Adams, and each generation in turn will ask: Where is the big white bear? It will be a sorry answer to say he went under while conservationists weren't looking. Aldo Leopold sorry white answers 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 The worthiness of any cause is not measured by its clean record, but by its readiness to see the blots when they are pointed out, and to change its mind. Aldo Leopold records causes mind Recreational development is a job not of building roads into the lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind. Aldo Leopold roads job mind country
