Rachel Carson
American marine biologist, writer and conservationist (1907 to 1964) whose sea trilogy and 1962 book Silent Spring are credited with advancing marine conservation and the global environmental movement.
From the book Silent Spring20 korrents
Rachel Carson did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsThe most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsIt is not my contention that chemical insecticides must never be used. I do contend that we have put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons largely or wholly ignorant of their potentials for harm.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsWe have subjected enormous numbers of people to contact with these poisons, without their consent and often without their knowledge.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Our reading
The public must decide whether to stay on the present course, and can do so only with all the facts
Their wordsThe public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsI contend, furthermore, that we have allowed these chemicals to be used with little or no advance investigation of their effect on soil, water, wildlife, and man himself.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsFuture generations are unlikely to condone our lack of prudent concern for the integrity of the natural world that supports all life.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Our reading
This is an age of specialists who each see their own problem and miss or reject the larger frame
Their wordsThis is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware of or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsIt is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsIncidents like the eastern Illinois spraying raise a question that is not only 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.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsFor The First Time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsThese insecticides are not selective poisons; they do not single out the one species of which we desire to be rid.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsChemical control of insects seems to have proceeded on the assumption that the soil could and would sustain any amount of insult via the introduction of poisons without striking back.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsIf 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.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsThe earth's vegetation is part of a web of life in which there are intimate and essential relations between plants and the earth, between plants and other plants, between plants and animals.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsFor those in whom cancer is already a hidden or a visible presence, efforts to find cures must of course continue. But for those not yet touched by the disease and certainly for the generations as yet unborn, prevention is the imperative need.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsThe booming sales of chemical crabgrass killers are another example of how readily unsound methods catch on.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Our reading
Predators and prey are part of a vast web of life, all of which needs to be taken into account
Their wordsThe predator and the preyed upon exist not alone, but as part of a vast web of life, all of which needs to be taken into account.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsIt is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsWe must make wider use of alternative methods that are now known, and we must devote our ingenuity and resources to developing others.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
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Their wordsTwo critically important facts have been overlooked in designing the modern insect control programs. The first is that the really effective control of insects is that applied by nature, not by man.
↗Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 2002 edition)books.google.com All 20 from this book
The line under a date fills as the words age, a quarter at a time: past a month, six months, a year, and three years. Empty means said within the last month; full, more than three years ago. It says when, not whether it still holds — a change of mind is marked on the claim itself.
Dashed means we only know the words existed by that date; they may be older.