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

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

respect nature inspiring

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

Aldo Leopold

ethical wrong-things behavior

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

Aldo Leopold

garden land animal

There can be no doubt that a society rooted in the soil is more stable than

Aldo Leopold

pavement soil doubt

Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.

Aldo Leopold

motivational inspirational hands

There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.

Aldo Leopold

nature flower opportunity

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.

Aldo Leopold

sunset nature taken

The hope of the future lies not in curbing the influence of human occupancy - it is already too late for that - but in creating a better understanding of the extent of that influence and a new ethic for its governance.

Aldo Leopold

creating understanding lying

This song of the waters is audible to every ear, but there is other music in these hills, by no means audible to all. On a still night, when the campfire is low and the Pleiades have climbed over rimrocks, sit quietly and listen, and think hard of everything you have seen and tried to understand. Then you may hear it - a vast pulsing harmony - its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries.

Aldo Leopold

nature song life

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.

Aldo Leopold

hunting-and-fishing hunting wild-things

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

Aldo Leopold

pieces tasks land

That the situation appears hopeless should not prevent us from doing our

Aldo Leopold

hopeless situation should

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

hate nature hands

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

nature beauty integrity

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?

Aldo Leopold

nature ignorance animal

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.

Aldo Leopold

spiritual supposing-that two

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

Aldo Leopold

nature imagination travel

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.

Aldo Leopold

doctors land believe

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

respect community land

Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.

Aldo Leopold

attainment social animal