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
No important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal chage in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions.
Interpretation
Significant ethical progress requires a shift in our intellectual values and beliefs.
Aldo Leopold emphasizes that meaningful changes in our ethical viewpoints arise from a transformation in our intellectual priorities, loyalties, affections, and personal beliefs. This suggests that to truly advance in ethics, one must engage in a deep internal transformation that reflects on how we think and feel, rather than merely changing external behaviors or policies.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, you could use this quote to illustrate the importance of internal change for ethical leadership.
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.
We 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.
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.
Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.
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.
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.
Equality for men and women, across the world, not only in sports, is the goal. We obviously have a long way to go, but every little bit helps.
I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.
All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.
In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.
Thinking is always dangerous to the status quo. [...] The moment you start thinking, you'll want to change something.
We can either save the planet from catastrophic warming, or protect fossil fuel CEOs. Not both. Do the math(s)
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