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Aldo Leopold citations
Page 3

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
Aldo Leopold photo
Aldo Leopold: 139 citations2 J'aime

Aldo Leopold citations célèbres

“L'écologie n'arrive à rien parce qu'elle est incompatible avec notre idée abrahamique de la terre. Nous abusons de la terre parce que nous la considérons comme une commodité qui nous appartient. Si nous la considérons au contraire comme une communauté à laquelle nous appartenons, nous pouvons commencer à l'utiliser avec amour et respect. Il n'y a pas d'autre moyen si nous voulons que la terre survive à l'impact de l'homme mécanisé, et si nous voulons engranger la moisson esthétique qu'elle est capable d'offrir à la culture.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Almanach d'un comté des sables, 1949

“C'est au cœur de l'hiver qu'il m'arrive de glaner auprès de mes pins quelque chose de plus important que la politique des bois ou les nouvelles de la météo. Cela arrive de préférence par quelque soirée lugubre, quand tous les détails superflus sont ensevelis sous la neige et que le silence de la tristesse élémentaire pèse à nouveau sur toute forme de vie. Mes pins se tiennent droits comme des piquets, chacun sous sa charge de neige, en rangées successives; dans la pénombre derrière eux, je sens la présence des autres par centaines. Dans ces moments-là, je ressens une curieuse transfusion de courage.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Almanach d'un comté des sables, 1949

“Le chef de bureau qui envoya le trappeur était un biologiste au fait de l'architecture de l'évolution, mais qui ignorait que les hautes flèches puissent être aussi importantes que les vaches. Il ne prévoyait pas qu'en moins de vingt ans le pays des cow-boys deviendrait un pays de touristes et qu'en tant que tel il aurait plus besoin d'ours que de biftecks.
Les députés qui votèrent les crédits nécessaires pour débarrasser les montagnes de leurs ours étaient des fils de pionniers, qui acclamaient les vertus supérieures de la vie pionnière, mais faisaient en même temps tout ce qui était en leur pouvoir pour la supprimer.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Almanach d'un comté des sables, 1949

“La montagne qu'il faut déplacer pour libérer le processus vers une éthique, c'est tout simplement ceci : cessez de penser au bon usage de la terre comme à un problème exclusivement économique. Examinez chaque question en termes de ce qui est éthiquement et esthétiquement juste autant qu'en termes de ce qui est économiquement avantageux. Une chose est juste lorsqu'elle tend à préserver l'intégrité, la stabilité et la beauté de la communauté biotique. Elle est injuste lorsqu'elle tend à l'inverse.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Almanach d'un comté des sables, 1949

“On court deux dangers spirituels à ne pas posséder une ferme. Le premier est de croire que la nourriture pousse dans les épiceries. Le second, de penser que la chaleur provient de la chaudière. Pour écarter le premier danger, il convient de planter un jardin, de préférence assez loin de toute épicerie susceptible de brouiller la démonstration. Pour le second, il suffit de poser sur ses chenets une bûche de bon chêne, loin de toute chaudière, et de s'y réchauffer tandis qu'une tempête de neige maltraite les arbres au-dehors. Pour peu qu'on l'ait abattu, scié, fendu et transporté soi-même, en laissant son esprit travailler en même temps, on se souviendra longtemps d'où vient la chaleur, avec une profusion de détails qu'ignoreront toujours ceux qui passent le week-end en ville près d'un radiateur.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Almanach d'un comté des sables, 1949

“Nous luttons tous pour la sécurité, la prospérité, le confort, la longévité et l'ennui. Le cerf lutte avec ses longues pattes souples, le vacher avec ses pièges et ses poisons, l'homme d'État avec son stylo, la plupart d'entre nous avec des machines, des bulletins de vote et des dollars, mais cela revient toujours à la même chose : la paix pour notre temps. Un succès relatif en ce domaine n'a rien de pernicieux, peut-être même est-il la condition nécessaire d'une pensée objective, mais une sécurité excessive ne recèle, semble-t-il, que des dangers à long terme. C'est peut-être cela, l'idée contenue dans la proposition de Thoreau : le salut du monde passe par l'état sauvage. C'est peut-être cela, le sens caché du hurlement du loup, bien connu des montagnes, mais rarement perçu par les humains.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Almanach d'un comté des sables, 1949

“La terre, donc, n'est pas que le sol, c'est une fontaine d'énergie qui traverse un circuit de sols, de plantes et d'animaux. Les chaînes alimentaires sont les canaux vivants qui conduisent l'énergie vers le haut; la mort et la décomposition la ramènent dans le sol. Le circuit n'est pas fermé; une partie de l'énergie est perdue au cours de la décomposition, une partie est ajoutée en étant absorbée par l'air; une partie est emmagasinée dans les sols, les tourbes et les forêts anciennes; mais c'est un circuit autonome, comme un fond de vie automatiquement renouvelé, en augmentation constante. Il y a toujours une perte nette due au lessivage des sols, mais celui-ci est normalement peu important et contrebalancé par la désintégration des roches. Le produit de l'érosion se dépose dans l'océan et réémerge, dans le cours du temps géologique, pour former de nouvelles terres et de nouvelles pyramides.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Almanach d'un comté des sables, 1949

“Ce chant des eaux, tout le monde peut l'entendre, mais il est une autre musique dans ces collines, qui n'est en aucun cas accessible à tous. Pour en percevoir ne fût-ce que quelques notes, il faut commencer par y vivre longtemps, et apprendre le langage des collines et des rivières. Alors, par une nuit tranquille, quand le feu de camp est au plus bas et que les Pléiades ont escaladé les corniches, restez assis où vous êtes et tendez l'oreille pour discerner le hurlement d'un loup, en pensant très fort à tout ce que vous avez vu et essayé de comprendre. Alors, vous l'entendrez peut-être – une vaste harmonie, comme une pulsation – dont la partition s'inscrit sur un millier de collines, dont les notes sont la vie et la mort des animaux et des plantes, dont les rythmes englobent les secondes et les siècles.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Almanach d'un comté des sables, 1949

“Ainsi l'Histoire, des marais comme des marchés, s'achève-t-elle toujours sur un paradoxe. La valeur suprême de ces marais, c'est leur sauvagerie, et la grue est la sauvagerie incarnée. Mais toute protection de la vie sauvage est vouée à l'échec, car pour chérir, nous avons besoin de voir et de caresser, et quand suffisamment de gens ont vu et caressé, il ne reste plus rien à chérir.”

Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Almanach d'un comté des sables, 1949

Aldo Leopold: Citations en anglais

“No farmer-sportsman group is stronger than the ties of mutual confidence and enthusiasm which bind its members.”

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Aldo Leopold

"History of the Riley Game Cooperative, 1931-1939" [1940]; Published in For the Health of the Land, J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle (eds.), 1999, p. 189.
1940s

“An oak is no respecter of persons.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“February: Good Oak”, p. 9.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "January Thaw", "February: Good Oak" & "March: The Geese Return"

“On a fair morning the mountain invited you to get down and roll in its new grass and flowers (your less inhibited horse did just this if you failed to keep a tight rein). Every living thing sang, chirped, and burgeoned. Massive pines and firs, storm-tossed these many months, soaked up the sun in towering dignity. Tassel-eared squirrels, poker-faced but exuding emotion with voice and tail, told you insistently what your already knew full well: that never had there been so rare a day, or so rich a solitude to spend it in.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“Arizona and New Mexico: On Top”, p. 125.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

“Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree—and there will be one.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“December: Pines above the Snow”, p. 81.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "November: Axe-in-Hand," "November: A Mighty Fortress," and "December: Pines above the Snow"

“One hundred and twenty acres, according to the County Clerk, is the extent of my worldly domain. But the County Clerk is a sleepy fellow, who never looks at his record books before nine o’clock. What they would show at daybreak is the question here at issue. Books or no books, it is a fact, patent both to my dog and myself, that at daybreak I am the sole owner of all the acres I can walk over. It is not only boundaries that disappear, but also the thought of being bounded.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“July: Great Possessions”, p. 41.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "May: Back from the Argentine," "June: The Alder Fork," "July: Great Possessions," and "July: Prairie Birthday"

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

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Aldo Leopold

&quot; Game Cropping in Southern Wisconsin http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/AldoLeopold/AldoLeopold-idx?type=turn&amp;id=AldoLeopold.ALReprints&amp;entity=AldoLeopold.ALReprints.p0692&amp;isize=XL&quot;, Our Native Landscape; Published by &quot;The Friends of Our Native Landscape,&quot; October 1927. <br class="br">1920s

“An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically, is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct. These are two definitions of one thing. The thing has its origin in the tendency of interdependent individuals or groups to evolve modes of co-operation. The ecologist calls these symbioses. Politics and economics are advanced symbioses in which the original free-for-all competition has been replaced, in part, by co-operative mechanisms with an ethical content.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "The Land Ethic", p. 202.

“It is on some, but not all, of these misty autumn day-breaks that one may hear the chorus of the quail. The silence is suddenly broken by a dozen contralto voices, no longer able to restrain their praise of the day to come.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“September: The Choral Copse”, p. 53.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "August: The Green Pasture," "September: The Choral Copse," "October: Smoky Gold," and "October: Red Lanterns"

“Above all we should, in the century since Darwin, have come to know that man, while now captain of the adventuring ship, is hardly the sole object of its quest, and that his prior assumptions to this effect arose from the simple necessity of whistling in the dark.
These things, I say, should have come to us. I fear they have not come to many.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon”, p. 110.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"

“What more delightful avocation than to take a piece of land and, by cautious experimentation, to prove how it works? What more substantial service to conservation than to practice it on one's own land?”

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Aldo Leopold

"Grand-Opera Game" [1932]; 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. 172.
1930s

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

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Aldo Leopold

"Engineering and Conservation" [1938]; 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. 254.
1930s

“Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wilderness", p. 200.

“Do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what and whom do we love? Certainly not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter downriver. Certainly not the waters, which we assume have no function except to turn turbines, float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not the plants, of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "The Land Ethic", p. 204.

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

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Aldo Leopold

letter to Bill Vogt, 21 January 1946, quoted in Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work, p. 478.
1940s

“Six days shalt thou paddle and pack, but on the seventh thou shall wash thy socks.”

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Aldo Leopold

"Canada, 1924"; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 54.
1920s

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes — something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view. Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. … I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain”, p. 130-132.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

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

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Aldo Leopold

"Wildflower Corners" [1939]; Published in For the Health of the Land, J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle (eds.), 1999, p. 123.
1930s

“The erasure of a human subspecies is largely painless — to us — if we know little enough about it. A dead Chinaman is of little import to us whose awareness of things Chinese is bounded by an occasional dish of chow mein. We grieve only for what we know. The erasure of Silphium from western Dane County is no cause for grief if one knows it only as a name in a botany book.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“July: Prairie Birthday”, p. 48.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "May: Back from the Argentine," "June: The Alder Fork," "July: Great Possessions," and "July: Prairie Birthday"

“It is a century now since Darwin gave us the first glimpse of the origin of species. We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of generations: that men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of kinship with fellow-creatures; a wish to live and let live; a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon”, p. 109.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"

“Our grandfathers were less well-housed, well-fed, well-clothed than we are. The strivings by which they bettered their lot are also those which deprived us of [passenger] pigeons. Perhaps we now grieve because we are not sure, in our hearts, that we have gained by the exchange. The gadgets of industry bring us more comforts than the pigeons did, but do they add as much to the glory of the spring?”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon”, p. 109.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"

“How would you like to have a thousand brilliantly colored cliff swallows keeping house in the eaves of your barn, and gobbling up insects over your farm at the rate of 100,000 per day? There are many Wisconsin farmsteads where such a swallow-show is a distinct possibility.”

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Aldo Leopold

"Cliff Swallows to Order" [1944]; Published in For the Health of the Land, J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle (eds.), 1999, p. 119.
1940s

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

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Aldo Leopold

"Preface".
1930s, Game Management, 1933

“All history consists of successive excursions from a single starting-point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wilderness", p. 200.

“For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Foreword, p. vii.

“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.”

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Aldo Leopold

"Chukaremia" [1938]; 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. 246.
1930s

“We classify ourselves into vocations, each of which either wields some particular tool, or sells it, or repairs it, or sharpens it, or dispenses advice on how to do so; by such division of labors we avoid responsibility for the misuse of any tool save our own. But there is one vocation — philosophy — which knows that all men, by what they think about and wish for, in effect wield all tools. It knows that men thus determine, by their manner of thinking and wishing, whether it is worthwhile to wield any.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“November: Axe-in-Hand”, p. 68.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "November: Axe-in-Hand," "November: A Mighty Fortress," and "December: Pines above the Snow"

“That biological jack-of-all-trades called ecologist tries to be and do all these things. Needless to say, he does not succeed.”

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Aldo Leopold

&quot; The Deer Swath http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/AldoLeopold/AldoLeopold-idx?type=turn&amp;entity=AldoLeopold.ALDeskFile.p0799&amp;id=AldoLeopold.ALDeskFile&amp;isize=L&quot; [1948]; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 127. <br class="br">1940s

“It can be stated as a sober fact that the iron-heel attitude has already reduced by half the ability of Wisconsin to support a cooperative community of men, animals, and plants during the next century. Moreover, it has saddled us with a repair bill, the magnitude of which we are just beginning to appreciate. If some foreign invader attempted such loot, the whole nation would resist to the last man and the last dollar. But as long as we loot ourselves, we charge the indignity to 'rugged individualism', and try to forget it.”

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Aldo Leopold

"The Arboretum and the University" [1934]; 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. 210.
1930s

“Engineers did not discover insulation: they copied it from these old soldiers of the prairie war.”

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Aldo Leopold livre Almanach d'un comté des sables

“April: Bur Oak”, p. 27.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "April: Come High Water," "April: Draba," "April: Bur Oak," & "April:Sky Dance"

“Bread and beauty grow best together. Their harmonious integration can make farming not only a business but an art; the land not only a food-factory but an instrument for self-expression, on which each can play music to his own choosing.”

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Aldo Leopold

"The Conservation Ethic" [1933]; 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. 191.
1930s