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
Written byAldo Leopold1887–1948 · American forester, wildlife ecologist and writer
Genuine, and precisely locatable. Leopold wrote it in the Foreword to A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, which he dated Madison, Wisconsin, 4 March 1948; the book was published posthumously by Oxford University Press in 1949. It is not from his essay “The Land Ethic,” where it is most often placed.
“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” Aldo Leopold, Foreword to A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Oxford University Press, 1949), p. viii; foreword dated Madison, Wisconsin, 4 March 1948. Verified via Quotle.info
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Provenance
The Foreword to A Sand County Almanac
Work
A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
Section
Foreword — p. viii
Dated
Madison, Wisconsin, 4 March 1948
First published
1949, Oxford University Press (posthumous)
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.
the Foreword continues
The paragraph runs on to argue that there is no other way for land to survive mechanized man; the next paragraph then splits the formulation in two, calling land-as-community the basic concept of ecology and land-as-something-loved an extension of ethics.
Wikiquote’s entry for Aldo Leopold ↗ carries the sentence in its sourced section, cited to A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Foreword, p. viii — not among its disputed or misattributed lines.
We then read the Foreword itself, reproduced in full in the Aldo Leopold Foundation’s discussion guide for the book ↗. The wording matches word for word, and the Foreword closes with the signature block “Aldo Leopold / Madison, Wisconsin / 4 March 1948.”
To test the common claim that the line comes from Part III, we searched a complete text of “The Land Ethic” ↗. Neither “commodity belonging to us” nor “community to which we belong” occurs in the essay.
Leopold dated the Foreword 4 March 1948 and died 48 days later, on 21 April 1948, of a heart attack while helping neighbours fight a grass fire near Baraboo, Wisconsin, per his Wikipedia biography ↗; the book followed in 1949.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Right author, wrong chapter — and drifting words
Nobody disputes that Leopold wrote this. What goes wrong is where people say it comes from, and how the wording slips in transit.
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Mis-sourced“The Land Ethic” essay wrong chapter
The Sierra Club’s John Muir Exhibit page on Leopold ↗ introduces the line as coming from “Leopold’s seminal essay about the ‘land ethic’” and then runs it straight into the famous “a thing is right…” sentence from Part III with only an ellipsis between, so the two read as one passage. They are from different parts of the book: a complete text of “The Land Ethic” ↗ does not contain “commodity belonging to us” or “community to which we belong” anywhere.
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Reworded“We abuse land because we see it as a commodity” verb swapped
A widely liked Goodreads entry ↗ carries the sentence with “see” in place of “regard,” which flattens Leopold’s deliberate contrast between how we regard land and how we later come to see it.
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Reworded“We abuse the land… see the land as a community” articles added
Leopold wrote “land” bare, as a mass noun — the whole biotic community, not a parcel. Renderings that insert the definite article are common; a Rainwater Management feature ↗ puts that version in its headline and credits it to the 1949 book.
Leopold signed the Foreword “Madison, Wisconsin, 4 March 1948.” He died 48 days later, on 21 April 1948, and the book appeared the following year. So the sentence everyone quotes is effectively his closing statement of intent — written after the essays, to tell readers what the whole collection was for.
That placement explains its shape. The Foreword is where Leopold compresses three parts of a book into a few lines of argument, and this pair of sentences is the compression: a diagnosis (land held as property) and a prescription (land held as membership). The chapter that develops the idea at length, “The Land Ethic,” sits at the far end of the book in Part III — which is very likely why so many people file the quote there.
The book’s most-quoted sentence is not in its most-quoted chapter.
Two forewords, one published
Leopold wrote an earlier foreword, signed 31 July 1947, that was never used. It is longer and far more autobiographical — Arizona, predator control, the slow turn in his own thinking — and it is the source of his other most-quoted line, about living alone in a “world of wounds.” The Aldo Leopold Foundation has published an account of that discarded draft.
The 1948 replacement is shorter and structural: it walks through Parts I, II and III and then delivers the “commodity / community” formulation. Both forewords are Leopold’s; only the March 1948 one reached print in 1949.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1887–1948 · American forester, wildlife ecologist, professor of game management
Aldo Leopold was born in Burlington, Iowa on 11 January 1887 and spent his career in forestry and wildlife science, becoming professor of game management at the University of Wisconsin in 1933 — the first professorship of its kind. He died of a heart attack on 21 April 1948 while helping neighbours fight a grass fire near his Baraboo farm, a year before the book that made his name appeared. A Sand County Almanac, assembled from his shack sketches and essays, has since sold over two million copies in ten languages and remains the founding text of the “land ethic.”
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Cite this
Primary source
Aldo Leopold, “Foreword” to A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Oxford University Press, 1949), viii. Foreword dated Madison, Wisconsin, 4 March 1948.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘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’?” Last verified 25 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/we-abuse-land-because-we-regard-it-as-a-commodity-belonging/