Aldo Leopold quotes for UPSC

A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than by a mob of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact.

A profession is a body of men who voluntarily measure their work by a higher standard than their clients demand. To be professionally acceptable, a policy must be sound as well as salable. Wildlife administration, in this respect, is not yet a profession.

Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another.

We speak glibly of conservation education, but what do we mean by it? If we mean indoctrination, then let us be reminded that it is just as easy to indoctrinate with fallacies as with facts. If we mean to teach the capacity for independent judgement, then I am appalled by the magnitude of the task.

Science contributes moral as well as material blessings to the world. Its great moral contribution is objectivity, or the scientific point of view. This means doubting everything except facts; it means hewing to the facts, let the chips fall where they may.

But wherever the truth may lie, this much is crystal-clear: our bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy.

The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.

In our attempt to make conservation easy, we have made it trivial.

The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.

Wildflower corners are easy to maintain, but once gone, they are hard to rebuild.

Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.

Conservation is not merely a thing to be enshrined in outdoor museums, but a way of living on land.

We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses.

Land-use ethics are still governed wholly by economic self-interest, just as social ethics were a century ago.

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.

Relegating conservation to government is like relegating virtue to the Sabbath. Turns over to professionals what should be daily work of amateurs.

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.

Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically 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.

Patriotism requires less and less of making the eagle scream, but more and more of making him think.

That the situation is hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.

Only the most uncritical minds are free from doubt.

Ideas, like men, can become dictators. We Americans have so far escaped regimentation by our rulers, but have we escaped regimentation by our own ideas? I doubt if there exists today a more complete regimentation of the human mind than that accomplished by our self-imposed doctrine of ruthless utilitarianism.