Rachel Carson

We are not apart from nature, but a part of it.

The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something of himself for the sake of generations to come.

The earth is our home, and we must protect it.

The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.

The more we understand the natural world, the more we appreciate its complexity and beauty.

The sense of wonder is an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years.

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

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, but at its end lies disaster. The other road—the less traveled by—offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of our earth.

Future generations are not going to forgive us for the way we have treated the earth.

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 sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

We are surrounded by an astounding array of poisons, and we are told that they are safe. But safe for whom? Safe for what?

The public is fed a steady diet of reassuring statements, while the evidence of harm mounts.

It is not my contention that chemical pesticides must never be used. I contend, rather, that we have allowed these chemicals to be used with little or no advance investigation of their effect on soil, water, wildlife, and man himself.

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. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible.

The chemical war is never won. It is only a holding action, and a losing one at that.

The balance of nature is not a static thing. It is a dynamic, shifting, and complex interrelationship.

We are dealing with a problem that is global in scope. The poisons we release into the environment do not respect national boundaries.

The 'harmless' chemicals of today are the deadly poisons of tomorrow.

The more we learn about the living world, the more we are impressed by its intricacy and its vulnerability.

It is a truism that in this age of specialization, men are not often encouraged to look at the whole.