253 Quotes by Rachel Carson

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 discipline of the writer is to learn to be still and listen to what his subject has to tell him.

It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged.

Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. 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. The other fork of the road-the one "less traveled by"-offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.

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.

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

The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.

Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is -- whether its victim is human or animal -- we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing, we set back the progress of humanity.