Aldo Leopold citations

Aldo Leopold est un forestier, écologue et écologiste américain. Il a influencé le développement de l'éthique environnementale moderne et le mouvement pour la protection des espaces naturels. Aldo Leopold est considéré comme l'un des pères de la gestion de la protection de l'environnement aux États-Unis. Il a pratiqué la pêche et la chasse tout au long de sa vie. Wikipedia  

✵ 11. janvier 1887 – 21. avril 1948   •   Autres noms آلدو لئوپولد, ალდო ლეოპოლდი
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Aldo Leopold: 139   citations 2   J'aime

Aldo Leopold citations célèbres

Aldo Leopold: Citations en anglais

“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.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Foreword, p. viii.
Contexte: Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. 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. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the aesthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture.

“Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

"A Man's Leisure Time," 1920; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 8.
1920s
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills not only because of their novelty, but because they represented complete freedom to make mistakes. … Perhaps every youth needs an occasional wilderness trip, in order to learn the meaning of this particular freedom.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“Wisconsin: Flambeau”, p. 113.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"

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

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Conservation Esthetic", p. 176.
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
Contexte: The trophy-recreationist has peculiarities that contribute in subtle ways to his own undoing. To enjoy he must possess, invade, appropriate. Hence the wilderness that he cannot personally see has no value to him. Hence the universal assumption that an unused hinterland is rendering no service to society. To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.

“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.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy”, p. 101.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
Contexte: To build a road is so much simpler than to think of what the country really needs. A roadless marsh is seemingly as worthless to the alphabetical conservationist as an undrained one was to the empire-builders. Solitude, the one natural resource still undowered of alphabets, is so far recognized as valuable only by ornithologists and cranes.
Thus always does history, whether of marsh or market place, end in paradox. The ultimate value in these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate. But 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.

“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.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "The Land Ethic", p. 224-225.
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
Contexte: 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.

“The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“November: Axe-in-Hand”, p. 71.
Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "November: Axe-in-Hand," "November: A Mighty Fortress," and "December: Pines above the Snow"

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

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Manitoba: Clandeboye, p. 168.
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“It is fortunate, perhaps, that no matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows, one can never learn all of the salient facts about any one of them.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“April: Sky Dance”, p. 32-33.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "April: Come High Water," "April: Draba," "April: Bur Oak," & "April:Sky Dance"
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators… The land is one organism.”

"Conservation" (c. 1938); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 145-146.
1930s
Contexte: Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. … Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism.

“When I call to mind my earliest impressions, I wonder whether the process ordinarily referred to as growing up is not actually a process of growing down; whether experience, so much touted among adults as the thing children lack, is not actually a progressive dilution of the essentials by the trivialities of living.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“Illinois and Iowa: Red Legs Kicking”, p. 120.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Illinois and Iowa: Red Legs Kicking," "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain,"

“He who hopes for spring with upturned eye never sees so small a thing as Draba. He who despairs of spring with downcast eye steps on it, unknowingly. He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“April: Draba”, p. 26.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "April: Come High Water," "April: Draba," "April: Bur Oak," & "April:Sky Dance"

“What a dull world if we knew all about geese!”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“March: The Geese Return”, p. 20.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "January Thaw", "February: Good Oak" & "March: The Geese Return"

“Only the most uncritical minds are free from doubt.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Conservation Esthetic", p. 165.

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

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wilderness", p. 188.

“It must be poor life that achieves freedom from fear.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“Arizona and New Mexico: On Top”, p. 126.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

“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 livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“February: Good Oak”, p. 6.
Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "January Thaw", "February: Good Oak" & "March: The Geese Return"

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Foreword, p. vii (opening words).

“Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching — even when doing the wrong thing is legal.”

Presumably a paraphrase of "A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct" or of "Hunting for sport is an improvement ..." above.
Unlikely to be by Leopold, who knew that ethics involves not only doing the right thing, but also determining the right thing in the face of competing desirable criteria.
Misattributed

“Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

"The Ecological Conscience" [1947]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 346.
1940s
Source: A Sand County Almanac
Contexte: The direction is clear, and the first step is to throw your weight around on matters of right and wrong in land-use. Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays. That philosophy is dead in human relations, and its funeral in land-relations is overdue.