Rachel Carson

I am not a scientist in the sense that I have a laboratory and do experiments. I am a writer, and I write about science.

Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.

We are surrounded by an earth that is alive, and we are part of it.

To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a coastal breeze—this is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.

It is not my contention that chemical pesticides never be used. I contend rather that we have put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons largely or wholly ignorant of their potential for harm.

Our attitude toward the environment is a reflection of our attitude toward ourselves.

We are faced with a situation in which the public is largely unaware of the dangers of pesticides.

The earth's vegetation is a marvelously intricate and delicately adjusted system.

Man's attitude toward nature is today a critical problem for the human race.

We are challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.

We stand now at a crossroads. 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. The other road—the one less traveled by—offers our last, our only chance to arrive at a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.

A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is a privilege to be able to share it.

The trouble with man is that he thinks he is smarter than nature.

The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind—that, and anger at the senseless, brutish things that were being done.

Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, administered daily, knowing that the cumulative effect will be to make us ill?

We are surrounded by an infinite variety of forms and forces, and we are part of them.

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

We are not to be saved by the grace of technology, but by the grace of God and our own good sense.

There is no drop of water in the ocean, not a cloud in the sky, not a leaf on a tree, that has not been touched by the hand of man.

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over 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, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the alienation from the sources of our strength.