Silent Spring Quotes

“... one turns away to ponder the question: Who has made the decision that sets in motion these chains of poisonings, this ever-widening wave of death that spreads out, like ripples when a pebble is dropped into a still pond? Who has placed in one pan of the scales the leaves that might have been eaten by the beetles and in the other the pitiful heaps of many-hued feathers, the lifeless remains of birds that fell before the unselective bludgeon of insecticidal poisons? Who has decided -- who has the right to decide -- for the countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme value is a world without insects, even though it be also a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight? The decision is that of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power; he has made it during a moment of inattention by millions to whom beauty and the ordered world of nature still have a meaning that is deep and imperative.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“We are rightly appalled by the genetic effects of radiation; how then, can we be indifferent to the same effect in chemicals that we disseminate widely in our environment?”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“The chemicals to which life is asked to make its adjustment are no longer merely the calcium and silica and copper and all the rest of the minerals washed out of the rocks and carried in rivers to the sea; they are the synthetic creations of man’s inventive mind, brewed in his laboratories, and having no counterparts in nature.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“... one turns away to ponder the question: Who has made the decision that sets in motion these chains of poisonings, this ever-widening wave of death that spreads out, like ripples when a pebble is dropped into a still pond? Who has placed in one pan of the scales the leaves that might have been eaten by the beetles and in the other the pitiful heaps of many-hued feathers, the lifeless remains of birds that fell before the unselective bludgeon of insecticidal poisons? Who has decided -- who has the right to decide -- for the countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme value is a world without insects, even though it be also a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight? The decision is that of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power; he has made it during a moment of inattention by millions to whom beauty and the ordered world of nature still have a meaning that is deep and imperative.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“The earth's vegetation is part of a web of life in which there are intimate and essential relations between plants the the earth, between plants and other plants, between plants and animals. Sometimes we have no choice but to disturb these relationships, but we should do so thoughtfully, with full awareness that what we do may have consequences remote in time and place.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“...[T]here is no" safe "dose of a carcinogen.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“On the other hand, those who are willing to wait for an extra season other two for full results (against an Japanese beetle) will turn to milky disease; they will be rewarded with lasting control that become more, rather than less effective with the passage of time.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“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, Silent Spring

“They should not be called ‘insecticides’, but ‘biocides’.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“What sets the new synthetic insecticides is their enormous biological potency.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“....The chemists' ingenuity in devising insecticides has long ago outrun biological knowledge of the way these poisons affect the living organism.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“It was a house-that-Jack-built sequence, in which the large carnivores had eaten the smaller carnivores, that had eaten the herbivores, that had eaten the plankton, that had absorbed the poison from the water.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“Most of us walk unseeing through the world, unaware alike of its beauties, its wonders, and the strange and sometimes terrible intensity of the lives that are being lived about us.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“For time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“Carson’s writing initiated a transformation in the relationship between humans and the natural world and stirred an awakening of public environmental consciousness. It”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“...[I]t is simply impossible to predict the effects of lifetime exposure to chemical and physical agents that are not part of the biological experience of man.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“five hundred new chemicals to which the bodies of men and animals are required somehow to adapt each year, chemicals totally outside the limits of biologic experience.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“The ultimate answer is to use less toxic chemicals so that the public hazard from their misuse is greatly reduced.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“For time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time. The rapidity of change and the speed with which new situations are created follow the impetuous and heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“The question of chemical residues on the food we eat is a hotly debated issue. The existence of such residues is either played down by the industry as unimportant or is flatly denied. Simultaneously, there is a strong tendency to brand as fanatics or cultists all who are so perverse as to demand that their food be free of insect poisons. In all this cloud of controversy, what are the actual facts?”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“A dynamic female zoology professor expanded her intellectual horizons by urging her to take the daring step of majoring in biology rather than English. In doing so, Carson discovered that science not only engaged her mind but gave her “something to write about.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“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.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“We must change our philosophy, abandon our attitude of human superiority and admit that in many cases in natural environments we find ways and means of limiting populations of organisms in a more economical way than we can do it ourselves”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“As Albert Schweitzer has said, “Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species—man—acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“Who has made the decision that sets in motion these chains of poisonings, this ever-widening wave of death that spreads out, like ripples when a pebble is dropped into a still pond? Who has placed in one pan of the scales the leaves that might have been eaten by the beetles and in the other the pitiful heaps of many-hued feathers, the lifeless remains of the birds that fell before the unselective bludgeon of insecticidal poisons? Who has decided - who has the right to decide - for the countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme value is a world without insects, even though it be also a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight? The decision is that of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power; he has made it during a moment of inattention by millions to whom beauty and the ordered world of nature still have a meaning that is deep and imperative.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“Incidents like the eastern Illinois spraying raise a question that is not 9nly scientific but moral. The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“Life is a miracle beyond our comprehension, and we should reverence it even where we have to struggle against it.... The”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“If we would divert to constructive research even a small fraction of the money spent each year on the development of ever more toxic sprays, we could find ways to use less dangerous materials and to keep poisons out of our waterways. When will the public become sufficiently aware of the facts to demand such action?”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“Man, however much he like to pretend the contrary, is part of nature.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring