Rachel Carson

For 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.

A Who's Who of pesticides is therefore a veritable rogues' gallery of poisons.

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.

Future generations are not going to forgive us for the way we are destroying the planet.

We are faced with a situation in which the public is being asked to accept a diet of poisons in order to satisfy the demands of a few powerful interests.

It is not my intention to create hysteria, but to awaken people to the dangers that exist.

The public is largely unaware of the true nature of the problem, and that is why I felt compelled to write this book.

The chemical industry is fighting back with all the power at its command, but I will not be silenced.

We are poisoning the earth and all that dwells upon it, and we are doing it in the name of progress.

The most alarming aspect of the story is that the effects of these poisons are cumulative and largely irreversible.

The balance of nature is not a static thing; it is a dynamic, complex, and constantly changing relation among living things and their nonliving environment.

To understand the life of the sea, we must look to the life of the earth.

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.

The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind—that, and anger at the heedless and needless destruction of that beauty.

We are still in the Dark Ages when it comes to understanding how these chemicals affect us.

It is a appalling that the public is not being told the truth about what is happening to their environment.

I have no doubt that we are on a collision course with disaster if we continue down this path.

The fact that we are so ignorant of the long-term effects of these chemicals is terrifying.

The chemical industry's response to my book is exactly what I expected: a campaign of misinformation and personal attacks.

I am not an alarmist, but I am gravely concerned about the future of life on Earth.