“Even in the vast and mysterious reaches of the sea we are brought back to the fundamental truth that nothing lives to itself.”

For mankind as a whole, a possession infinitely more valuable than individual life is our genetic heritage, our link with past and future… Yet genetic deterioration through man-made agents is the menace of our time.

Like the resource it seeks to protect, wildlife conservation must be dynamic, changing as conditions change, seeking always to become more effective.

We are not truly civilized if we concern ourselves only with the relation of man to man. What is important is the relation of man to all life.

But most of all I shall remember the monarchs, that unhurried westward drift of one small winged form after another, each drawn by some invisible force.

The Choice, after all, is ours to make.

It is ironic to think that man might determine his own future by something so seemingly trivial as the choice of an insect spray.

The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance.

Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction.

Knowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent.

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.

[Writing is] largely a matter of application and hard work, or writing and rewriting endlessly until you are satisfied that you have said what you want to say as clearly and simply as possible. For me that usually means many, many revisions.

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.

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.

The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.

The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.

When we go down to the low-tide line, we enter a world that is as old as the earth itself – the primeval meeting place of the elements of earth and water, a place of compromise and conflit and eternal change.

I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life – past, present, and future.

Conservation is a cause that has no end. There is no point at which we will say our work is finished.

You can change environments, but until you change yourself, nothing else will ever change.

Can you honestly say the environment(s) you are in will yield the kind of harvest you are expecting?

She is the perfume that scents the environment she blooms in.

Music is your way to change the frequencies of everything around you and move your own body, move your whole environment.

Environmental laws were not passed to protect our air and water, they were passed to get votes.

A wise man once said, never discuss philosophy or politics in a disco environment.