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

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.
Aldo Leopold

Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient.
Aldo Leopold

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

In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them.
Aldo Leopold

Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers.
Aldo Leopold

One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.
Aldo Leopold

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

To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.
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


We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.
Aldo Leopold