Land Ethic Quotes & Sayings

I was not born here by my consciousness towards a land ethic was — Terry Tempest Williams

The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth, and the Native American shared this elemental ethic: The land was alive to his loving touch, and he, its son, was brother to all creatures. — Stewart Udall

Perhaps the most serious obstacle impeding the evolution of a land ethic is the fact that our educational and economic system is headed away from, rather than toward, an intense consciousness of land. Your true modern is separated from the land by many middlemen, and by innumerable physical gadgets. He has no vital relation to it; to him it is the space between cities on which crops grow. Turn him loose for a day on the land, and if the spot does not happen to be a golf links or a "scenic" area, he is bored stiff. If crops could be raised by hydroponics instead of farming, it would suit him very well. Synthetic substitutes for wood, leather, wool, and other natural land products suit him better than the originals. In short, land is something he has "outgrown — Aldo Leopold

A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity. — Aldo Leopold

I have purposely presented the land ethic as a product of social evolution because nothing so important as an ethic is ever 'written' ... It evolves in the minds of a thinking community. — Aldo Leopold

My favorite quote: The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land ... In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such. — Aldo Leopold

A culture is as rich and as capable of surviving as it has imaginative artists, skilled men of science, a high ethic level, workable government, land and natural resources, in about that order of importance. — L. Ron Hubbard

In his latest book Marc Ellis asks the defining question for Jewish life today: 'Can injustice, represented by Jewish domination of Jerusalem, be at the heart of the covenant?' Ellis's answer is that the covenant of Israel with God has been shattered by the creation of a state at the expense of Palestinian life in the land. It can only be renewed by a new ethic and practice of justice that reconcile these two people, who have become irrevocably linked together in the land, either for good or for ill. — Rosemary Radford Ruether

Here, by the grace of God and an inside straight, we have a personality untouched by the psychotic taboos of our tribe - and you want to turn him into a carbon copy of every fourth-rate conformist in this frightened land! Why don't you go whole hog? Get him a brief case and make him carry it wherever he goes - make him feel shame if he doesn't have it. — Robert A. Heinlein

A land ethic for tomorrow should ... stress the oneness of our resources and the live-and-help-live logic of the great chain of life. — Stewart Udall

To be sure, they have had the occasional success, but there is little chance that North America will develop a functional land ethic until it finds a way to overcome its irrational addiction to profit. — Thomas King

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for). The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. — Aldo Leopold

Our deep respect for the land and its harvest is the legacy of generations of farmers who put food on our tables, preserved our landscape, and inspired us with a powerful work ethic. — James H. Douglas Jr.