Birds should be saved because of utilitarian reasons; and, moreover, they should be saved because of reasons unconnected with any return in dollars and cents. A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful cathedral. The extermination of the passenger pigeon meant that mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
“Bird Reserves at the Mouth of the Mississippi,” A Book Lover’s Holiday in the Open (1916)
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Never cut what you can untie.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist, philosopher, essayist, poet
Pensées, #1797 (1838) [tr. Collins (1928)]
Alt. trans.: "Don't cut what you can untie." [Notebooks, ed. Paul Auster (1983)]
