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Rachel Carson

118 quotes

“The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Acceptance speech of the National Book Award for Nonfiction (1952) for The Sea Around Us; also in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999) edited by Linda Lear, p. 91
“The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities. If they are not there, science cannot create them. 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.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Acceptance speech of the National Book Award for Nonfiction (1952); also in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999) edited by Linda Lear, p. 91
“We have looked first at man with his vanities and greed and his problems of a day or a year; and then only, and from this biased point of view, we have looked outward at the earth he has inhabited so briefly and at the universe in which our earth is so minute a part. Yet these are the great realities, and against them we see our human problems in a different perspective. Perhaps if we reversed the telescope and looked at man down these long vistas, we should find less time and inclination to plan for our own destruction.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Acceptance speech of the National Book Award for Nonfiction (1952); also in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999) edited by Linda Lear, p. 91
“We have been troubled about the world, and had almost lost faith in man; it helps to think about the long history of the earth, and of how life came to be. And when we think in terms of millions of years, we are not so impatient that our own problems be solved tomorrow.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech accepting the John Burroughs Medal (April 1952); also in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999) edited by Linda Lear, p. 96
“The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth — soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife. To utilize them for present needs while insuring their preservation for future generations requires a delicately balanced and continuing program, based on the most extensive research. Their administration is not properly, and cannot be, a matter of politics.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to the editor, Washington Post (1953); quoted in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999) edited by Linda Lear, p. 99
“Writing is a lonely occupation at best. Of course there are stimulating and even happy associations with friends and colleagues, but during the actual work of creation the writer cuts himself off from all others and confronts his subject alone. He moves into a realm where he has never been before — perhaps where no one has ever been. It is a lonely place, even a little frightening.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Acceptance speech of the Achievement Award of the American Association of University Women, Washington, D.C., June 22, (1956)
“Only within the 20th Century has biological thought been focused on ecology, or the relation of the living creature to its environment. Awareness of ecological relationships is — or should be — the basis of modern conservation programs, for it is useless to attempt to preserve a living species unless the kind of land or water it requires is also preserved. So delicately interwoven are the relationships that when we disturb one thread of the community fabric we alter it all — perhaps almost imperceptibly, perhaps so drastically that destruction follows.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Essay on the Biological Sciences" in Good Reading (1958)
“If we have been slow to develop the general concepts of ecology and conservation, we have been even more tardy in recognizing the facts of the ecology and conservation of man himself. We may hope that this will be the next major phase in the development of biology. Here and there awareness is growing that man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man's future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these forces.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Essay on the Biological Sciences" in Good Reading (1958)
“To many of us, this sudden silencing of the song of birds, this obliteration of the color and beauty and interest of bird life, is sufficient cause for sharp regret. To those who have never known such rewarding enjoyment of nature, there should yet remain a nagging and insistent question: If this "rain of death" has produced so disastrous an effect on birds, what of other lives, including our own?”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Washington Post, April 10, 1959 (In Rachel Carson: Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment)
“In our modern world nothing may be taken for granted-not even the spring songs that herald the return of the birds.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Vanishing Americans (1959) in Rachel Carson: Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment
“I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life — past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand that the stream of life, flowing out of the dim past into the uncertain future, is in reality a unified force, though composed of an infinite number and variety of separate lives.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface to Humane Biology Projects (1961) by the Animal Welfare Institute
“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.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface to Humane Biology Projects (1961) by the Animal Welfare Institute
“The problem I dealt with in Silent Spring is not an isolated one. The excessive and ill-advised use of chemical pesticides is merely one part of a sorry whole-the reckless pollution of our living world with harmful and dangerous substances. Until very recently, the average citizen assumed that "someone" was looking after these matters and that some little understood but confidently relied upon safeguards stood like shields between his person and any harm. Now he has experienced, from several different directions, a rather rude shattering of these beliefs.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Rachel Carson: Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment (December 1962)
“I believe that only in that atmosphere of intellectual freedom can we solve the problems before us now.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Man Against Himself" (1963) in Rachel Carson: Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment
“To me, Dr. Albert Schweitzer is the one truly great individuals our modern times have produced.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (1963) in Rachel Carson: Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment
“The modern world worships the gods of speed and quantity, and of the quick and easy profit, and out of this idolatry monstrous evils have arisen. Yet the evils go long unrecognized.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Foreword to the book Animal Machines by Ruth Harrison (1964).
“Fishes and plankton, whales and squids, birds and sea turtles, all are linked by unbreakable ties to certain kinds of water—to warm water or cold water, to clear or turbid water, to water rich in phosphates or in silicates.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sharpest peaks of the Ridge are the cluster of islets known as the Rocks of St. Paul, near the equator. The entire cluster of half a dozen islets is not more than a quarter of a mile across, and their rocky slopes drop off at so sheer an angle that water more than half a mile deep lies only a few feet off shore.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sediments are a sort of epic poem of the earth.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The truth is that disposal has proceeded far more rapidly than our knowledge justifies. To dispose first and investigate later is an invitation to disaster, for once radioactive elements have been deposited at sea they are irretrievable. The mistakes that are made now are made for all time.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“F or the globe as a whole, the ocean is the great regulator, the great stabilizer of temperatures. It has been described as 'a savings bank for solar energy, receiving deposits in seasons of excessive insolation and paying them back in seasons of want. Without the ocean, our world would be visited by unthinkably harsh extremes of temperature.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Day by day and season by season, the ocean dominates the world's climate.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In our own lifetime we are witnessing a startling alteration of climate.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Activities in the nonhuman world also reflect the warming of the Arctic-the changed habits and migrations of many fishes, birds, land mammals, and whales.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fifteen years that I spent in fishery and wildlife conservation work with the *Government have taken me into certain places where few other women have been.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tradition is important in the Government, but fortunately I had conspirators who were willing to help me shatter precedent. But among my male colleagues who had to sign the papers, the thought of one woman on a ship with some fifty men was unthinkable. After much soul searching, it was decided that maybe two women would be all right, so I arranged with a friend, who was also a writer, to go with me.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is something deeply impressive about the night sea as one experiences it from a small vessel far from land. When I stood on the afterdeck on those dark nights, on a tiny man-made island of wood and steel, dimly seeing the great shapes of waves that rolled about us, I think I was conscious as never before that ours is a water world, dominated by the immensity of the sea....”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is one quality that characterizes all of us who deal with the sciences of the earth and its life-we are never bored. We can't be. There is always something new to be investigated. Every mystery solved brings us to the threshold of a greater one...”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The pleasures, the values of contact with the natural world, are not reserved for the scientists. They are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of a lonely mountain top-or the sea-or the stillness of a forest; or who will stop to think about so small a thing as the mystery of a growing seed.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not afraid of being thought a sentimentalist when I stand here tonight and tell you that I believe natural beauty has a necessary place in the spiritual development of any individual or any society. I believe that whenever we destroy beauty, or whenever we substitute something man-made and artificial for a natural feature of the earth, we have retarded some part of man's spiritual growth.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As human beings, we are part of the whole stream of life.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our origins are of the earth. And so there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe it is important for women to realize that the world of today threatens to destroy much of that beauty that has immense power to bring us a healing release from tension. Women have a greater intuitive understanding of such things. They want for their children not only physical health but mental and spiritual health as well. I bring these things to your attention tonight because I think your awareness of them will help, whether you are practicing journalists, or teachers, or librarians, or housewives and mothers.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We see the destructive trend on a national scale in proposals to invade the national parks with commercial schemes such as the building of power dams. The parks were placed in trust for all the people, to preserve for them just such recreational and spiritual values as I have mentioned. Is it the right of this, our generation, in its selfish materialism, to destroy these things because we are blinded by the dollar sign? Beauty-and all the values the derive from beauty-are not measured and evaluated in terms of the dollar.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A preoccupation with the wonder and beauty of the earth has strongly influenced the course of my life.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of birds, in the ebb and flow of the tides; in the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in these repeated refrains of nature-the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself, with steel and concrete, from the realities of earth and water. Perhaps he is intoxicated with his own power, as he goes farther and farther into experiments for the destruction of himself and his world. For this unhappy trend there is no single remedy-no panacea. But I believe that 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.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware of or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth's vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species-man-acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Given time-time not in years but in millennia-life adjusts, and a balance has been reached. For time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The figure is staggering and its implications are not easily grasped-500 new chemicals to which the bodies of men and animals are required somehow to adapt each year, chemicals totally outside the limits of biologic experience.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can anyone believe 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.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a sobering fact...that the method of massive chemical control has had only limited success, and also threatens to worsen the very conditions it is intended to curb.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Much of the necessary knowledge is now available but we do not use it. We train ecologists in our universities and even employ them in our governmental agencies but we seldom take their advice. We allow the chemical death rain to fall as though there were no alternative, whereas in fact there are many, and our ingenuity could soon discover many more if given opportunity.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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?”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Future generations are unlikely to condone our lack of prudent concern for the integrity of the natural world that supports all life.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the public protests, confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizing pills of half truth. We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source