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.
If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.
It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist: the threat is rather to life itself.
A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.
The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.
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.
Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good?
