The Best Aldo Leopold Quotes

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Mountain Journey
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What Are Your Favorite Aldo Leopold Quotes?

Aldo Leopold (January 11, 1887 – April 21, 1948) was an environmentalist, conservationist, scientist, farmer, forester, and author who was “was influential in the development of modern environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness conservation” (Wikipedia.org).

Aldo Leopold | By Pacific Southwest Region 5 (Aldo Leopold trip to the Rio Gavilan) [CC BY 2.0 or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Aldo Leopold | By Pacific Southwest Region 5 (Aldo Leopold trip to the Rio Gavilan) [CC BY 2.0 or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Leopold worked for the US Forest Service in various locations in the United States in the early 1900’s and was instrumental in writing the USFS’s 1st game and fish handbook and proposing the first wilderness area.

Leopold was also a distinguished nature writer who authored numerous books. Perhaps his best known book is A Sand County Almanac where Leopold coined one of his “best known ideas is the “land ethic,” which calls for an ethical, caring relationship between people and nature” (AldoLeopold.org).

Today, Aldo Leopold lives on in many ways. His books and writing are available to inspire open minded people. The Aldo Leopold Foundation is a non-profit with the mission of “to foster the land ethic through the legacy of Aldo Leopold.” And of course the 202,016-acre Aldo Leopold Wilderness in the Gila National Forest of New Mexico was named after him in 1980. For more info about Leopold’s legacy, visit Wikipedia.org.

Below you’ll find a selection of the best Aldo Leopold quotes:

  • The richest values of wilderness lie not in the days of Daniel Boone, nor even in the present, but rather in the future.
  • I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.
  • There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.
  • We abuse land because we see 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.
  • Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.
  • The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: What good is it?
  • Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.
  • That the situation appears hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.
  • The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.
  • 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.
  • Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching- even when doing the wrong thing is legal.
  • There can be no doubt that a society rooted in the soil is more stable than one rooted in pavements.
  • 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.
  • A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of the land.
  • To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.
  • Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth?
  • One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.
  • Land is not merely soil, it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals.
  • Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.
  • We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness.
  • All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.
  • Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.
  • The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.
  • We shall never achieve harmony with the land, anymore than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.

Which of these Aldo Leopold quotes is your favorite? Did we miss any quotes that we should add to the list?


To read more about Aldo Leopold pick up one of many books on Amazon.com. Learn more about Aldo Leopold on Wikipedia.org or AldoLeopold.org. Discover more Aldo Leopold quotes at Wikiquote.org.


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