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

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.

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

Every mystery solved brings us to the threshold of a greater one.

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

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

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

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.

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.