That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.

— Aldo Leopold

The boundary between tame and wild exists only in the imperfections of the human mind.

— Aldo Leopold

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?

— Aldo Leopold

The practices we now call conservation are, to a large extent, local alleviations of biotic pain. They are necessary, but they must not be confused with cures. The art of land doctoring is being practiced with vigor, but the science of land health is yet to be born.

— Aldo Leopold

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

— Aldo Leopold

The three species of pine native to Wisconsin (white, red and jack) differ radically in their opinions about marriageable age. The precocious jack pine sometimes bloom and bears cones a year or two after leaving the nursery, and a few of my 13-year-old jacks already boast of grandchildren. My 13-year-old reds first bloomed this year, but my whites have not yet bloomed; they adhere closely to the Anglo-Saxon doctrine of free, white, and twenty-one.

— Aldo Leopold

This whole effort to rebuild and stabilize a countryside is not without its disappointments and mistakes... What matter though these temporary growing pains when one can cast his eye upon the hills and see hard-boiled farmers who have spent their lives destroying land now carrying water by hand to their new plantations

— Aldo Leopold

To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.

— 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 the 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