Frasi di Aldo Leopold (139 frasi) | Citazioni e frasi celebri

Aldo Leopold: 139 frasi 0 Mi piace

Aldo Leopold frasi celebri

“Tutto inizia con un'ampia striscia di limo steso in strati fini sulla sabbia di una riva che si prosciuga. Man mano che lentamente si asciuga al sole, i cardellini si bagnano nelle sue pozze, e daini, aironi, pivieri, tartarughe, procioni la ricoprono con i ricami delle loro impronte. Non c'è nulla che preannunzi, in questo stadio, il verificarsi di nuovi eventi.
Ma quando vedo la striscia di limo farsi verde di eleocharis, sto più attento a quel che può accadere, perché questo è il segno che il fiume è in vena di dipingere. Quasi subito l'eleocharis diviene un denso prato erboso, così spesso e lussureggiante che i topi campagnoli dei pianori poco più in alto non possono resistere alla tentazione. Si muovono in massa sul verde pascolo, e trascorrono le notti strusciando i fianchi sul tappeto vellutato. Un labirinto di impronte ben rilevate parla per il loro entusiasmo. Il cervo passeggia avanti e indietro sul tappeto di eleocharis, in apparenza solo per il piacere di camminarvi sopra. Persino una talpa tutta casa ha attraversato sottoterra il banco asciutto del fiume fino alla striscia di eleocharis, dove può sollevare la zolla erbosa e giocarvi a sazietà.”

Aldo Leopold

Origine: Da A Sand County Almanac; citato in Peter S. Wenz, Ecologia, moralità e caccia, in Aa. Vv., Etica e animali, traduzione di Brunella Casalini, Liguori Editore, Napoli, 1998, p. 274. ISBN 88-207-2686-6

“Un'etica terrestre, modifica il ruolo dell'Homo Sapiens da conquistatore della terra a semplice membro e cittadino della sua comunità. Implica rispetto per altri membri e per la stessa comunità.”

Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“Forse il pericolo che minaccia più gravemente l'evoluzione di un'etica della terra è il fatto che i nostri sistemi educativi ed economici vanno nella direzione opposta a quella che li condurrebbe verso lo sviluppo di un'intensa consapevolezza della terra. L'uomo moderno è separato dalla terra da troppi intermediari e arnesi; non ha un rapporto vitale con essa e per lui "terra" significa solo lo spazio fra una città e l'altra, dove si producono i raccolti. Se lo si lascia libero un giorno in campagna, in un luogo che non sia un campo da golf o un belvedere, si annoierà a morte. Se i raccolti fossero prodotti con l'idroponica e non con l'agricoltura gli andrebbe benissimo e inoltre preferisce i sostituti sintetici del legno, pelle, lana e di altri prodotti naturali della terra. In poche parole, la terra ormai gli va stretta.”

Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“L'opinione corrente a proposito di queste malattie della terra si riflette nel fatto che le nostre cure sono ancora prevalentemente locali. Perciò quando il terreno perde fertilità usiamo un fertilizzante o, nel migliore dei casi, ne alteriamo la flora e la fauna, senza considerare che le sue specie selvatiche, poiché hanno formato quel particolare terreno, possono essere molto importanti per la sua salvaguardia. Si è scoperto di recente per esempio che un buon raccolto di tabacco dipende per qualche motivo sconosciuto dalla preparazione del terreno fatta dalle piante di senecio selvatico. Non ci rendiamo conto che simili legami di dipendenza possono essere estremamente comuni in natura.”

Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“Noi ci classifichiamo secondo le nostre vocazioni, ciascuna delle quali ci porta a maneggiare un particolare attrezzo, a venderlo, a ripararlo, ad affilarlo o a dare istruzioni su come fare tutto ciò: attraverso questa suddivisione delle attività evitiamo di assumerci responsabilità per il cattivo uso di qualsiasi attrezzo, salvo il nostro. Ma esiste una vocazione, quella per la filosofia, la quale riconosce che tutti gli uomini attraverso ciò che pensano o desiderano, di fatto maneggiano tutti gli strumenti e quindi, attraverso il loro modo di pensare e di desiderare, stabiliscono se valga la pena di usarne qualcuno.”

Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“La nostra società, sempre più grande e bella, a questo punto è come un ipocondriaco, talmente ossessionato dalla sua salute finanziaria da aver perso la capacità di rimanere sano. Il mondo è così incessantemente avido di vasche da bagno che ha perduto l'equilibrio necessario per costruirle e persino per chiudere i rubinetti.”

Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“Il Signore dà e il Signore toglie, ma Egli non è più il solo a farlo. Quando il nostro lontano antenato inventò la pala l'uomo fu in grado di dare: poteva piantare un albero; quando inventò l'ascia gli fu possibile togliere: poteva tagliarlo. Chi possiede della terra ha assunto, più o meno consapevolmente, le funzioni divine di creare e distruggere le piante.”

Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“La capacità di percepire il valore culturale della natura allo stato selvaggio si riduce, in ultima analisi, a una questione di umiltà intellettuale. La superficialità degli uomini d'oggi, che hanno perso le proprie radici terrene, fa loro credere di aver già scoperto ciò che conta; questi sono coloro che cianciano di imperi politici ed economici destinati a durare secoli. Solo lo studioso riconosce che la storia consiste di successivi percorsi da un unico punto di partenza, a cui l'uomo ritorna continuamente per organizzare sempre nuovi viaggi, alla ricerca di una scala di valori costante. Solo lo studioso comprende perché l'autentica natura selvaggia determina e dà significato alle vicende umane.”

Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“L'atto di creare è generalmente riservato agli dei e ai poeti, ma anche la gente più umile può superare questa restrizione se sa come farlo. Per piantare un pino, per esempio, non è necessario essere un dio né un poeta, basta possedere una pala.”

Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

Aldo Leopold: Frasi in inglese

“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.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

Origine: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Foreword, p. viii.
Contesto: 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.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

"A Man's Leisure Time," 1920; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 8.
1920s
Origine: 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.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

“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"

“I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.”

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Aldo Leopold

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

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

Origine: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Conservation Esthetic", p. 176.
Origine: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
Contesto: 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.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

“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"
Origine: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
Contesto: 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.

“Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

Origine: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“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.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

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

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

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

“We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

“Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain”, p. 133.
This is a paraphrase of Thoreau: see explanation by the Walden Woods project http://www.walden.org/Library/Quotations/The_Henry_D._Thoreau_Mis-Quotation_Page).
Origine: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

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

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

Origine: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Manitoba: Clandeboye, p. 168.
Origine: 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.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

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

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Aldo Leopold

"Conservation" (c. 1938); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 145-146.
1930s
Contesto: 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.

“This song of the waters is audible to every ear, but there is other music in these hills, by no means audible to all. To hear even a few notes of it you must first live here for a long time, and you must know the speech of hills and rivers. Then on a still night, when the campfire is low and the Pleiades have climbed over rimrocks, sit quietly and listen for a wolf to howl, and think hard of everything you have seen and tried to understand. Then you may hear it—a vast pulsing harmony—its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

Origine: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Chihuahua and Sonora: The Green Lagoons", p. 149.

“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.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

“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.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

“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!”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

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

“Science contributes moral as well as material blessings to the world. Its great moral contribution is objectivity, or the scientific point of view. This means doubting everything except facts; it means hewing to the facts, let the chips fall where they may.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

Origine: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Chihuahua and Sonora: The Green Lagoons", p. 153-154.

“Some paintings become famous because, being durable, they are viewed by successive generations, in each of which are likely to be found a few appreciative eyes. I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all, except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush, and it is the same river who, before I can bring my friends to view his work, erases it forever.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

“August: The Green Pasture”, p. 51.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "August: The Green Pasture," "September: The Choral Copse," "October: Smoky Gold," and "October: Red Lanterns"

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

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

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

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

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

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

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

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

“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"

“Man always kills the thing he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

Origine: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Chihuahua and Sonora: The Green Lagoons", p. 157-158.

“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.”

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Aldo Leopold

"Conservation" (c. 1938); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 145-146.
1930s

“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.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

“February: Good Oak”, p. 6.
Origine: 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.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

Origine: 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.”

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Aldo Leopold

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

“Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

Origine: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.”

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Aldo Leopold

“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.”

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Aldo Leopold libro A Sand County Almanac

"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
Origine: A Sand County Almanac
Contesto: 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.