Rachel Carson Quotes
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It is not half so important to know as to feel.
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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.
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We are rightly appalled by the genetic effects of radiation; how then, can we be indifferent to the same effect in chemicals we disseminate widely in our environment?
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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.
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I am always more interested in what I am about to do than what I have already done.
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By suggestion and example, I believe children can be helped to hear the many voices about them. Take Time to listen and talk about the voices of the earth and what they mean-the majestic voice of thunder, the winds, the sound of surf or flowing streams.
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I still feel there is a case to be made for my old belief that as man approaches the 'new heaven and the new earth' -- or the space-age universe, if you will, he must do so with humility rather than with arrogance.
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If having endured much, we at last asserted our 'right to know' and if, knowing, we have concluded that we are being asked to take senseless and frightening risks, then we should no longer accept the counsel of those who tell us that we must fill our world with poisonous chemicals, we should look around and see what other course is open to us.
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Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?
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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?
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Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world.
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Science is part of the reality of living; it is the what, the how, and the why of everything in our experience.
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No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.
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The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance.
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Nature reserves some of her choice rewards for days when her mood may appear to be somber.
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The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, . . . when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man . . . . It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.
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Knowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent... It is, in the deepest sense, a privilege as well as a duty to speak out to many thousands of people.
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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?
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Conservation is a cause that has no end. There is no point at which we will say our work is finished.
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There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature.
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Drink in the beauty and wonder at the meaning of what you see.
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Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life.
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[Writing is] largely a matter of application and hard work, or writing and rewriting endlessly until you are satisfied that you have said what you want to say as clearly and simply as possible. For me that usually means many, many revisions.
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For the sense of smell, almost more than any other, has the power to recall memories and it's a pity we use it so little.