Rachel Carson Quotes
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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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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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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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Nature reserves some of her choice rewards for days when her mood may appear to be somber.
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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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The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance.
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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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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.
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Drink in the beauty and wonder at the meaning of what you see.
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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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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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Is it reasonable to suppose that we can apply a broad-spectrum insecticide to kill the burrowing larval stages of a crop-destroying insect ... without also killing the 'good' insects whose function may be the essential one of breaking down organic matter and maintaining healthy soil?
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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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Beginnings are apt to be shadowy.
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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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The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became. I realized that here was the material for a book. What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important.
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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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The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are not reserved for scientists but are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea and sky and their amazing life.
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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.
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There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature.
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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. . . . Now I can believe I have at least helped a little.
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Now I truly believe that we in this generation must come to terms with nature, and I think we're challenged, as mankind has never been challenged before, to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature but of ourselves.
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In its mysterious past it encompasses all the dim origins of life and receives in the end, after, it may be, many transmutations, the dead husks of that same life. 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.
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Any concept of biology is not only sterile and profitless, it is distorted and untrue, if it puts its primary focus on unnatural conditions rather than on those vast forces not of man's making that shape and channel the nature and direction of life.