Aldo Leopold

"If education relative to the natural world is a hollow exercise, then the basis for sound land conservation is also hollow."

"Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching."

"The conservation movement must be reborn."

"The land remembers everything we do to it."

"Acres for Americans means acres for all of us, not for the few."

"No important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions."

"The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community."

"Each species is a masterpiece, equally sacred as ourselves."

"To perceive is not necessarily to understand."

"The richest nations have passed out of the huntsman stage of wildlife conservation."

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

"Wilderness value to civilization is not a proof of readiness for an ethic of conservation."

"Land is not a commodity."

"The prairie began in Ohio and ended in Colorado. It is still substantially intact in the High Plains."

"We reach back to the stone age, mentally, and further back—we, the supermen of this atomic age."

"Conservation provides data on what can be done."

"Good land-use planning is a function of proper education."

"Land management without wildlife is like fishing without water."

"Only those who love the land can truly conserve it."

"The prairie is a highly organized system of life."

"We need to learn to think like a mountain."

"Every creature has intrinsic worth."

"We are remaking the Alhambra of the North and calling it progress."

"The land ethic presumes respect for fellow-members."

"We are the only creatures who create art from nature."

"The whole art of land doctoring is to know when to let alone."

"Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land."

"Land without wildlife is merely real estate."

"We cannot command the wind, but we can adjust our sails."

"There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm: the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the danger of supposing that heat comes from the furnace."