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

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.

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.

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature.

Why would anyone believe it is possible to lay down such barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called insecticides, but biocides.

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