Rachel Carson

"If we are troubled by the events of the present, surely it is because we do not understand the events of the past."

"There is in every human being a deep-seated craving to understand the mystery of life."

"The modern world worships the gods of speed and efficiency, but these gods are cruel masters."

"How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind?"

"We have allowed ourselves to become isolated from the great rhythms and cycles of nature."

"That mankind is dependent on the soil is, if anything, even more true now than in the days when we were predominantly an agricultural people."

"The real and lasting rewards are not the kudos of one's peers or the blandishments of the public - they are the satisfaction of having done something worth doing."

"Once a man's eyes are opened to the realities of the natural world, he cannot look away."

"The control of nature has been conducted as though nature were an enemy to be conquered, instead of a life-support system to be sustained."

"If man is to survive, these problems must be resolved; if civilization is to be worthy of the name, it must transcend itself."

"I believe the balance of nature is a delicate one and one that modern man has come dangerously close to destroying."

"To paraphrase the wisdom of ancient cultures: we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children."

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

"There is a price we must pay if we would understand the workings of the natural world, and that price is humility."

"The phenomenon of life as we know it is unique in the universe, and we have a responsibility to preserve it."

"Courage, I have come to believe, is not the absence of fear, but the assessment that something else is more important than fear."

"Every writer knows the struggle to shape raw material into something of beauty and meaning."

"The modern chemicals industry has brought us great convenience, but at what cost to the natural world?"

"There is no such thing as a safe poison - only degrees of danger."

"If we poison the sources of life itself, what difference does it make how comfortable our lives have become?"

"The chemicals to which life is asked to make its adjustment are no longer merely the calcium and silica and copper and all the rest of the minerals washed out of the rocks and carried in rivers to the sea."

"We are not separate from nature - we are part of it, and when we damage it, we damage ourselves."

"A fundamental question for our time: do we have the wisdom and the courage to change course?"

"The 'experts' often fail to see what lies before their eyes because they are blinded by their specializations."

"There is nothing static about nature; everything is in a state of flux, adapting, changing, evolving."

"If the earth is a living thing, then its health depends on ours, and ours depends on its."

"We must reclaim our sense of wonder at the simple fact of our existence on this planet."

"The beauty of the living world belongs to us all, and we are trustees of it for generations yet unborn."

"To my mind it is a grave disservice to science to put it into the category of things that are only for the specialist to know about."

"I am always more interested in how a person thinks than in what he thinks - for the methods of thought determine the limits of understanding."