Rachel Carson

"In solitude with nature, we find not isolation but connection to something larger and more lasting than ourselves."

"The test of whether we have developed a true environmental conscience is not whether we believe in conservation, but whether we practice it."

"Every creature that becomes extinct represents the loss of millions of years of evolutionary wisdom."

"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction."

"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."

"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 truly about the sea and leave out the poetry."

"The real wealth of the nation lies in the resources of the earth - the soil, the water, the forests, the minerals, and the wildlife."

"A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement."

"It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility."

"We are not truly civilized if we concern ourselves only with the relation of man to man. What of man's relation to the earth and all its creatures?"

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

"For the sense of smell, almost more than any other sense, has the power to recall memories and to move us emotionally."

"There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter."

"To understand the living present, and the promise of the future, we must examine the past."

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

"As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life."

"Every form of life is wonderful. Every species has something to tell us if we listen."

"A true conservationist is not one who talks about his love of the outdoors, but one who acts to preserve it."

"Wonder and humility are attitudes that have become much too rare in our modern world of specialists who have lost all sense of proportion."

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

"I am using the phrase 'the right to know' as I believe no one can make intelligent decisions about their world without understanding it."

"Perhaps if we reversed our thinking we would recognize that the destruction of nature is the destruction of ourselves."

"There is no way to understand living systems except in their relationship with the whole environment."

"The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance when it was supposed that we had dominion over all things on this earth."

"If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either in the salad bowl or in the air he breathes, it is surely only because our forefathers could conceive of no such problem."

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

"Somewhere along the way, we seem to have lost our sense of reverence for all living things."

"The aim of science should be not to control nature but to understand it."

"One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, 'What if I had never seen this before?' Imagine you are seeing it for the first time."