Rachel Carson quotes

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

Rachel Carson

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy and so it is the beginnings of the great mother life, the sea.

Rachel Carson

They want to see you in front of them, shake hands or bow. Whereas domestically, you can get by using the Web or the phone for sales.

Rachel Carson

Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.

Rachel Carson

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.

Rachel Carson

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?'.

Rachel Carson

Under the philosophy that now seems to guide our destinies, nothing must get in the way of the man with the spray gun.

Rachel Carson

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.

Rachel Carson

As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life.

Rachel Carson

The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and the convenience of man.

Rachel Carson

The discipline of the writer is to learn to be still and listen to what his subject has to tell him.

Rachel Carson

For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.

Rachel Carson

It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.

Rachel Carson

It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators.

Rachel Carson

No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.

Rachel Carson

For the sense of smell, almost more than any other, has the power to recall memories and it is a pity that we use it so little.

Rachel Carson

Because I was providing parts that weren't available anywhere in the world, within two years it became international and in the last four years I think I've penetrated 23 countries.

Rachel Carson

An era dominated by industry, in which the right to make money, at whatever cost to others, is seldom challenged.

Rachel Carson

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

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find resources of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

Rachel Carson

In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.

Rachel Carson

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road, the one less traveled by, offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.

Rachel Carson

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.

Rachel Carson

In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference.

Rachel Carson

The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.

Rachel Carson

To stand at the edge of the sea,
to sense the ebb and flow of the tides,
to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh,
to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of year,
to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.

Rachel Carson

One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space.

Rachel Carson

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.

Rachel Carson

My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon.

Rachel Carson

Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life.

Rachel Carson

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy.

Rachel Carson

The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and the convenience of man.

Rachel Carson

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

Rachel Carson

We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature.

Rachel Carson

Our attitude towards plants is a singularly narrow one. If we see any immediate utility in a plant we foster it. If for any reason we find its presence undesirable or merely a matter of indifference, we may condemn it to destruction forthwith.

Rachel Carson