Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides, but they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history, to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.
Aldo LeopoldRead
I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses gratitude for experiencing the beauty of wilderness in the past, while also lamenting its potential absence in the future.
Aldo Leopold reflects on the value of wilderness and natural landscapes, indicating that he appreciates having lived in times when such environments thrived. The quote serves as a commentary on the environmental changes and loss of nature due to human progress, suggesting that the future may lack the wild beauty that was once plentiful, and highlighting the importance of preserving wilderness for future generations.
Themes
WildernessNatureGratitudeEnvironmentFuture
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about environmental conservation, one could quote this to emphasize the importance of preserving natural spaces.
More from Aldo Leopold
All quotes βWe Americans, in most states at least, have not yet experienced a bear-less, eagle-less, cat- less, wolf-less woods. Germany strove for maximum yields of both timber and game and got neither.
Aldo LeopoldRead
When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver: He could plant a tree. And when the axe was invented, he became a taker: He could chop it down. Whoever owns land has thus assumed, whether he knows it or not, the divine functions of creating and destroying plants.
Aldo LeopoldRead
Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.
Aldo LeopoldRead
My dog does not care where heat comes from, but he cares that it comes, and soon. Indeed he considers my ability to make it come as something magical, for when I rise in the coal black pre-dawn and kneel by the hearth to make a fire, he pushes himself blandly between me and the kindling splits I have laid in the ashes, and I must touch a match to them by poking it between his legs. Such faith , I suppose, is the kind that moves mountains.
Aldo LeopoldRead
Individual thinkers since the days of Ezekiel and Isaiah have asserted that the despoliation of land is not only inexpedient but wrong. Society, however, has not yet affirmed their belief.
Aldo LeopoldRead
Similar quotes
The river and the garden have been the foundations of my economy here. Of the two I have liked the river best. It is wonderful to have the duty of being on the river the first and last thing every day. I have loved it even in the rain. Sometimes I have loved it most in the rain.
Wendell BerryRead
The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture.
Gaylord NelsonRead
Down the hill I went, and then, I forgot the ways of men, For night-scents, heady and damp and cool Wakened ecstasy
Sara TeasdaleRead
I wish that all of nature's magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.
Annie LeibovitzRead
Now this circumscribed power, which we have scarcely examined, scarcely studied, this power to whose actions we nearly always attribute an intention and a goal, this power, finally, that always does necessarily the same things in the same circumstances and nevertheless does so many and such admirable ones, is what we call 'nature' .
Jean-Baptiste LamarckRead
We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.
Margaret MeadRead