The sea is the universal sewer.

Farming as we do it is hunting, and in the sea we act like barbarians.

If human civilization is going to invade the waters of the earth, then let it be first of all to carry a message of respect.

It is fashionable nowadays to talk about the endless riches of the sea. The ocean is regarded as a sort of bargain basement, but I don't agree with that estimate. People don't realize that water in the liquid state is very rare in the universe. Away from earth it is usually a gas. This moisture is a blessed treasure, and it is our basic duty, if we don't want to commit suicide, to preserve it.

I swam across the rocks and compared myself favorably with the sars. To swim fishlike, horizontally, was the logical method in a medium eight hundred times denser than air. To halt and hang attached to nothing, no lines or air pipe to the surface, was a dream. At night I had often had visions of flying by extending my arms as wings. Now I flew without wings. (Since that first aqualung flight, I have never had a dream of flying.)

Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.

We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking.