Rachel Carson Quotes

The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.
RACHEL CARSON

Fiction Literature Science
In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.
RACHEL CARSON

Nature Space Spiritual Story
Every mystery solved brings us to the threshold of a greater one.
RACHEL CARSON

Greatness Mystery Oneself
Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life.
RACHEL CARSON

Alone Inspirational Life Mystery Nature Peace
The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.
RACHEL CARSON

Character Future Human Nature Ourselves Race
We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature.
RACHEL CARSON

Heart Life Peace
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.
RACHEL CARSON

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

Change Life Protection Seek
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.
RACHEL CARSON

Civilization Important Life Man Ourselves True
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.
RACHEL CARSON

Form Invisible Remember
The Choice, after all, is ours to make.
RACHEL CARSON

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

Choices Men Thinking
The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance.
RACHEL CARSON

Attitude Control Nature
Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction.
RACHEL CARSON

Destruction Emotion Existence Humility Lust Wonderful
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

Night Ocean Oneself Space Summer
Knowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent.
RACHEL CARSON

Future Myself Peace Silence
[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.
RACHEL CARSON

End Hard Work Myself Possible Satisfaction Simplicity Writing
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

Age Difference Forget Men Need Survive Victim
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

Attitude Destruction Difference Oneself Ourselves See
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.
RACHEL CARSON

Age Born Control Existence Men Nature Philosophy
The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.
RACHEL CARSON

Beautiful Place Sea Strange
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.
RACHEL CARSON

Nature Old World
There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature.
RACHEL CARSON

Healing Nature Peace Wild
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.
RACHEL CARSON

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

Environment History Myself Nature Past
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.
RACHEL CARSON

Long Lying Progress
The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind – that, and anger at the senseless, brutish things that were being done. . . . Now I can believe I have at least helped a little.
RACHEL CARSON

Beautiful Believe Live Mind Myself Save Try World

Famous Biologists