We All Strive For Safety, Prosperity, Comfort,

Our Tools Are Better Than We Are, And Grow Better Faster Than We Do. They Suffice To Crack The Atom, To Command The Tides, But They Do Not Suffice For The Oldest Task In Human History, To Live On A Piece Of Land Without Spoiling It.

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.

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.

But Wherever The Truth May Lie, This Much Is Crystal-clear: Our Bigger-and-better Society Is Now Like A Hypochondriac, So Obsessed With Its Own Economic Health As To Have Lost The Capacity To Remain Healthy. . . . Nothing Could Be More Salutary At This Stage Than A Little Healthy Contempt For A Plethora Of Material Blessings.

The Outstanding Scientific Discovery Of The Twentieth Century Is Not Television, Or Radio, But Rather The Complexity Of The Land Organism.