Top 15 Sylvia A. Earle Quotes

there’s a chemistry of life that has this capacity for enormous variation, maybe infinite variation. It’s a source of endless wonder and something that — it’s worth using our minds, that special gift that we have. There are other intelligent creatures out there — whales, dolphins, elephants, fish. Some of them are really smart. But they don’t know what we know. They can’t see the inside of a star or the inside of a starfish — except some of them, maybe, to eat them. But we have this power not only to explore, but we can go back in time. We can anticipate the future, far into the future. We can plot a course for ourselves based on intelligence. And the trick is: OK, homo sapiens, the smart ones, the wise ones — let’s take advantage of that capacity...Let’s put that into action and not just be like the bacteria on a dish that consume everything until they die. We don’t have to do that.

we know that with cats and dogs and horses and kids, humans, every face is really different. But it’s true with all forms of life.

that’s the joy of being a scientist and an explorer. You do what little children do. You ask questions, like: Who? What? Why? When? Where? How? And you never stop, and you never cease being surprised. You just never stop that sense of wonder. It is fantastic that life exists at all. And I revel in just the joy of being out in some wild place, or even in my own backyard. Just look at a leaf. It’s an amazing thing what goes on in a leaf; and it happens all the time, and we can breathe because of it, or because of photosynthesis that takes place there and in the sea. Knowing that, I think it’s just impossible to be bored.

Diving into the ocean, it’s like diving into the history of life on earth, not just over the last 50 or 1,000, but the last million, 10 million, 100 million years, because creatures are there that have been there for several hundred million years, not those same creatures, but their near relatives, like jellyfish; like — well, sharks have been around for 300 million years; horseshoe crabs, creatures that lured me into the ocean as a child in New Jersey, have a history that goes back at least 300 million years; so many forms of life that were found in the ocean long before there were multicellular creatures occupying space on the land.

There’s heaven on earth. It just happens to be in the ocean.

I feel like a witness to—I am—to the greatest era of change on the planet as a whole. Anybody who’s been around even for ten years is a part of this, but the longer you’ve been around, the more you’ve seen. And the last half-century, in particular, has been a time of revolutionary change. We didn’t know the existence of those great mountain chains, hydrothermal vents, the existence of life in the deepest sea, seven miles down. Nobody had been there. Not until 1960 was it possible for two men to make a descent to the deepest part of the sea.

there is a basic ethical attitude: respect for life, respect for other humans, certainly, but for all forms of life. It’s something that if everyone could just realize how special it is to be alive on this little blue speck in the universe, it’s a miracle that life exists at all and that we have a piece of time that is ours — whoever we are, shorter or longer, whatever it is, but — to really be a part of the action and to respect where we have come from, where we might be going.

The 21st century humans are poised to be the heroes for all time because we're armed with a superpower of knowing that we have to change our attitude about the world that keeps us alive, that we can't just continue mining and, you know, taking and taking. We have to be aware of the consequences.

we can't be happy or healthy if we don't take care of our life support system, the planet.

I think one of the most important trends is the awareness and willingness to embrace places and to recognize that protecting nature, the natural systems, have benefits back to us in terms not just of better health, not just because they're beautiful - it's not even a choice anymore; it's necessary for our existence. We have to realize we're a part of nature. We can see the connection between trees and climate. We can see connection between the forests and the ocean, the phytoplankton capturing carbon, generating oxygen, maintaining a planet that works in our favor. This is common sense.

it's still there - the habit of thinking that the ocean is too big to fail. And we're still taking life in the ocean for granted. We still think that we have the capacity to take fish on a scale that we currently are and continue to do it forever.

Being a child in Florida when my parents moved there in 1948 and witnessing the changes in the coastline, the marshes that I first discovered - finding horseshoe crab eggs, these tiny little creatures prospering in really clear water and going out on a dock at night and seeing these bioluminescent creatures just flashing and glowing - and witnessing the change, that the waters became not beautiful, clear and blue but muddy - that was powerful incentive to say, why are we doing this?

I've had a chance to live underwater 10 times now in various underwater laboratories and to use more than 30 different kinds of submarines, thousands of hours seeing the ocean from the inside out and realizing this is not just rocks and water; this is alive. It's a soup, like minestrone, but all the little pieces are alive.

Change happens because of individuals who team up with others or inspire others. And soon you’ve got 10 or 100 or 1,000, and then you’ve got a movement.

The ocean is the blue heart of the planet.