Rachel Carson

"The power to change the world lies within each of us."

"We must act with urgency, for time is running out for many species."

"The greatest gift we can give our children is a world worth living in."

"The real wealth of a nation consists of the character and capability of its people."

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts."

"In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth."

"The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials."

"There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature."

"If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry."

"The discipline of the writer is to learn to be still and listen to what his subject has to teach him."

"We are not truly civilized if we concern ourselves only with the relations of man to man. What is our relationship to the earth itself?"

"A naturalist is simply a person who observes nature with patience and care."

"Once you have seen the true nature of the living world around you, you can never again see it in the same way."

"The most lasting and universal treasures are those preserved in the natural world."

"To understand the birds one must learn their language, for in their calls are written all the secrets of the forest."

"Mankind has always been eager to accept any technological advance as an improvement, without first asking what might be lost."

"The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized."

"There is no drop of water in the ocean, not even in the deepest parts, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that create the tides."

"We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Frost's poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been travelling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster."

"The obligation to endure gives us the right to know the truth about the chemicals we are exposed to."

"If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life."

"A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood."

"To preserve life itself is not a sentimental whim but an act of enlightened self-interest."

"The writer must always serve truth, and truth demands that she write about what she has come to understand about the world."

"It is a somber thought that the only way to save the majority is through the existence of a dedicated few willing to stand against popular opinion."

"We have been very unwise in the patterns we have created in this landscape, and now we are beginning to see the bill come due."

"The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature, but of ourselves."

"Every natural thing is worth learning from, if we have the patience to observe it fully."

"Those people who will not listen to science must listen to nature's own voice speaking through the destruction of the living world."

"In nature nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything changes and moves forward."