That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.

Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our wikt:Abrahamic|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 wikt:aesthetic|aesthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture.

It is a matter of what a man thinks about while chopping, or while deciding what to chop.

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.

The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the pieces.

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.

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

Once you learn to read the land, I have no fear of what you will do to it, or with it. And I know many pleasant things it will do to you.

A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than that of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact.