Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides, but they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history, to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.
Aldo LeopoldRead
A land ethic...reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in _x000D_ turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. _x000D_ Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort _x000D_ to understand and preserve this capacity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A land ethic emphasizes our responsibility to care for the environment and its ability to regenerate.
Aldo Leopold's quote underscores the importance of having an ecological conscience, which is the awareness and acknowledgment of our individual responsibility towards the land. It highlights the concept of health as the land's ability to renew itself and positions conservation as our proactive role in understanding and safeguarding that regenerative capacity.
Themes
Land EthicEcological ConscienceConservationEnvironmentResponsibility
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on environmental responsibility, one might say, 'As Aldo Leopold reminds us, we must embrace our individual responsibility for the health of the land.'
More from Aldo Leopold
All quotes →We Americans, in most states at least, have not yet experienced a bear-less, eagle-less, cat- less, wolf-less woods. Germany strove for maximum yields of both timber and game and got neither.
Aldo LeopoldRead
When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver: He could plant a tree. And when the axe was invented, he became a taker: He could chop it down. Whoever owns land has thus assumed, whether he knows it or not, the divine functions of creating and destroying plants.
Aldo LeopoldRead
Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.
Aldo LeopoldRead
My dog does not care where heat comes from, but he cares that it comes, and soon. Indeed he considers my ability to make it come as something magical, for when I rise in the coal black pre-dawn and kneel by the hearth to make a fire, he pushes himself blandly between me and the kindling splits I have laid in the ashes, and I must touch a match to them by poking it between his legs. Such faith , I suppose, is the kind that moves mountains.
Aldo LeopoldRead
Individual thinkers since the days of Ezekiel and Isaiah have asserted that the despoliation of land is not only inexpedient but wrong. Society, however, has not yet affirmed their belief.
Aldo LeopoldRead
Similar quotes
A river, though, has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us.
Norman MacleanRead
If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant to look like.
Mary OliverRead
Every day I walk out into the world / to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
Mary OliverRead
Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest, living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment.
Jane GoodallRead
If we've learned any lessons during the past few decades, perhaps the most important is that preservation of our environment is not a partisan challenge; it's common sense. Our physical health, our social happiness, and our economic well-being will be sustained only by all of us working in partnership as thoughtful, effective stewards of our natural resources.
Ronald ReaganRead
If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us.
A. A. GillRead