Aldo Leopold

"All education should lead to an understanding of our interdependence with nature."

"The land knows how to be rich, the problem is whether we know how to be wise."

"Leopold believed that we must see the forest, not just the trees, and the ecology, not just the economics."

"Leisure is a form of silence, not a form of time off."

"The most serious obstacle to the evolution of a land ethic is the fact that our educational and economic system is headed away from, rather than toward, an intense consciousness of land."

"There is value in any experience that reminds us of our dependence upon the wide world, an experience that takes place in the blood rather than the intellect."

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

"Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot achieve it by conquest."

"The old prairie remembers that it is good to visit the past."

"Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind and heart."

"We humans are just one strand in the web of life; when we pull that strand thinking only of ourselves, the whole web unravels."

"The land is an organism, and those who break its components or deny its wholeness diminish themselves."

"A land ethic cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these resources, but it does affirm their right to exist."

"The penalty of an ecological education is that you live in a constant state of awareness about the diminishment of the world."

"Land ethic is a process, not a product."

"Every species has value not because humans decide it has worth, but because it exists and has always existed."

"We are not asked to maintain the 'balance of nature'; we must, instead, maintain the balance of life."

"Leopold taught that respecting nature is respecting ourselves."

"The land ethic demands recognition that the land does not exist for us alone."

"A land conscience is not instinctive; it must be educated and cultivated."

"To love, honor, and understand the land requires a willingness to see beyond ourselves."

"The song of a river is far more precious than the sound of machinery."

"Leopold believed that our separation from nature is our greatest impoverishment."

"There is no way to prosperity by denying the reality of the land."

"Evolution of a land ethic means recognizing the land, the soil, the waters, the plants, and the animals as deserving moral consideration."

"We live only by grace of the things we do not understand."

"A sand county almanac teaches us that ordinary days in nature are the most precious days of all."

"The essence of conservation is the application of common sense to common things."

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as the earth lasts."

"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity; we regard it as a commodity because we see it as a commodity."