Rachel Carson Quotes

But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.

One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, "What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew i would never see it again?

Conservation is a cause that has no end. There is no point at which we will say our work is finished.

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

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

Science is part of the reality of living; it is the what, the how, and the why of everything in our experience.

We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature.

Knowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent.

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.

Drink in the beauty and wonder at the meaning of what you see.

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

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

A rainy day is the perfect time for a walk in the woods.

In nature nothing exists alone.

Why would anyone believe it is possible to lay down such barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called insecticides, but biocides.

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

We are not truly civilized if we concern ourselves only with the relation of man to man. What is important is the relation of man to all life.

I am always more interested in what I am about to do than what I have already done.

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.

Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good?

Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction.

The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil.

We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven't become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe.

The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.

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

The Choice, after all, is ours to make.

For all at last return to the sea- to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever-flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.

Only as a child's awareness and reverence for the wholeness of life are developed can his humanity to his own kind reach its full development.

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

If I had influence with the good fairy... 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.

In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference.

Those who love and free nature are never alone.

There is one quality that characterizes all of us who deal with the sciences of the earth and its life - we are never bored.

Then the song of a whitethroat, pure and ethereal, with the dreamy quality of remembered joy.

The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.

I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life - past, present, and future.

Unless we have courage to recognize cruelty for what it is - whether its victim is human or animal - we cannot expect things to be much better in the world.

It is ironic to think that man might determine his own future by something so seemingly trivial as the choice of an insect spray.

Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life.

Even in the vast and mysterious reaches of the sea we are brought back to the fundamental truth that nothing lives to itself.

For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.

The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster.

It is not half so important to know as to feel.

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy.

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

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.

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

It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged.

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy and so it is the beginnings of the great mother life, the sea.