Rachel Carson Quotes

Los peces, los anfibios y los reptiles por un lado y las aves y los mamíferos de sangre caliente por otro, y cada uno de nosotros, llevamos en nuestras venas la corriente salina de nuestra sangre, en la cual el sodio, el potasio y el calcio se hallan en proporciones muy semejantes a las que existen en el agua del mar. Ésta es nuestra herencia desde el día, hace un número incalculable de millones de años, en que un remoto antecesor pasó de la etapa unicelular a la pluricelular y adquirió por vez primera un sistema circulatorio, en el interior del cual corría un fluido casi idéntico al agua del mar.

"...[T]here is no "safe" dose of a carcinogen."

If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.

I would like to say that in Silent Spring I have never asked the reader to take my word. I have given him a very clear indication of my sources. I make it possible for him-indeed I invite him-to go beyond what I report and get the full picture. This is the reason for the 55 pages of references. You cannot do this if you are trying to conceal or distort or to present half truths.

we are still in the warming-up stage following the last Pleistocene glaciation — that the world’s climate, over the next thousands of years, will grow considerably warmer before beginning a downward swing into another Ice Age. But what we are experiencing now is perhaps

There are other disturbing factors ... One is the growing interrelations between professional organizations and industry, and between science and industry.

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.

The most hopeful sign is an awakening of strong public interest and concern. People are beginning to ask questions and to insist upon proper answers instead of meekly acquiescing in whatever spraying programs are proposed. This in itself is a wholesome thing.

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.

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.

I clearly remember that in the days before Hiroshima I used to wonder whether nature-nature in the broadest context of the word-actually needed protection from man. Surely the sea was inviolate and forever beyond man's power to change it. Surely the vast cycles by which water is drawn up into the clouds to return again to the earth could never be touched. And just as surely the vast tides of life-the migrating birds-would continue to ebb and flow over the continents, marking the passage of the seasons. But I was wrong. Even these things, that seemed to belong to the eternal verities, are not only threatened but have already felt the destroying hand of man.

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.

By acquiescing in an act that causes such suffering to a living creature, who among us is not diminished?

"One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, "What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew i would never see it again?

The battle for a sane policy for controlling unwanted species will be a long and difficult one. The publication of Silent Spring was neither the beginning nor the end of that struggle.