Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his footage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important; it is such who prate of empires, political or economic, that will last a thousand years. It is only the scholar who appreciates that all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting-point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values. It is only the scholar who understands why the raw wilderness gives definition and meaning to the human enterprise.

— Aldo Leopold

Above all we should, in the century since Darwin, have come to know that man, while now captain of the adventuring ship, is hardly the sole object of its quest, and that his prior assumptions to this effect arose from the simple necessity of whistling in the dark.

— Aldo Leopold

Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how.

— Aldo Leopold

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

Do not let anyone tell you that these people made work of play. They simply realized that the most fun lies in seeing and studying the unknown.

— Aldo Leopold

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

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

— Aldo Leopold

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... The land is one organism.

— Aldo Leopold

I am convinced that most Americans of the new generation have no idea what a decent forest looks like. The only way to tell them is to show them.

— Aldo Leopold