“What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on.”

No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal.

If you realize you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert.

The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope.

We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.

No sooner does man discover intelligence than he tries to involve it in his own stupidity.

We must plant the sea and herd its animals using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization is all about – farming replacing hunting.

The sea is the universal sewer.

However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day.

The real cure for our environmental problems is to understand that our job is to salvage Mother Nature.

People protect what they love.

we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect.

If we were logical, the future would be bleak, indeed.

Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.

We are facing a formidable enemy in this field. It is the hunters… and to convince them to leave their guns on the wall is going to be very difficult.

Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.

I am not a scientist. I am, rather, an impresario of scientists.

My wife goes to Birmingham five times a week. My mom lives in Birmingham now after moving from Myrtle Beach. It’s not just the job. A lot of people don’t get that. My life is here.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity.

God looks after children, animals and idiots.

I am not enough of a mathematician to be able to judge either the well-foundedness or the limits of relativity in physics.

I look for what needs to be done. After all, that’s how the universe designs itself.

I had a chance to win $2 million, a week after high school graduation, and if I turned pro, the sponsor was going to financially support me.

Writing is reporting what we saw after the vision has left us. It is catching the fish which the tide has left far up on our shores in the low and depressed places.

I left Mainz after 18 years and thought, ‘Next time, I will work with a little less of my heart.’ I said that because we all cried for a week.