Rachel Carson Quotes

Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important, simply because of his new-found power to destroy it.

A preoccupation with the wonder and beauty of the earth has strongly influenced the course of my life.

... one turns away to ponder the question: Who has made the decision that sets in motion these chains of poisonings, this ever-widening wave of death that spreads out, like ripples when a pebble is dropped into a still pond? Who has placed in one pan of the scales the leaves that might have been eaten by the beetles and in the other the pitiful heaps of many-hued feathers, the lifeless remains of birds that fell before the unselective bludgeon of insecticidal poisons? Who has decided — who has the right to decide — for the countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme value is a world without insects, even though it be also a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight? The decision is that of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power; he has made it during a moment of inattention by millions to whom beauty and the ordered world of nature still have a meaning that is deep and imperative.

Poets often have a perception that gives their words the validity of science. So the English poet Francis Thompson said nearly a century ago, ‘Thou canst not stir a flower/Without troubling of a star.’ But the poet's insight has not become part of general knowledge.

A rainy day is the perfect time for a walk in the woods. I always thought so myself; the Maine woods never seem so fresh and alive as in wet weather. Then all the needles on the evergreens wear a sheath of silver; ferns seem to have grown to almost tropical lushness and every leaf has its edging of crystal drops. Strangely colored fungi — mustard-yellow and apricot and scarlet — are pushing out of the leaf mold and all the lichens and the mosses have come alive with green and silver freshness.

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.

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder . . . he [or she] needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.

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.

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.

What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?

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?

For mankind as a whole, a possession infinitely more valuable than individual life is our genetic heritage, our link with past and future. Shaped through long eons of evolution, our genes not only make us what we are, but hold in their minute beings the future — be it one of promise or threat.

As Albert Schweitzer has said, “Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

Another cause of concern is the increasing size and number of industry grants to the universities. On first thought, much support of education seems desirable, but on reflection we see that this does not make for unbiased research-it does not promote a truly scientific spirit. To an increasing extent, the man who commands the largest expense account-and who brings the largest grants to his university becomes an untouchable, with whom even the University president and trustees do not argue.

I believe that only in that atmosphere of intellectual freedom can we solve the problems before us now.