I was playing when I invented the aqualung. I think play is the most serious thing in the world.

A lot of people attack the sea, I make love to it.

For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.

Man, of all the animals, is probably the only one to regard himself as a great delicacy.

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

The real cure for our environmental problems is to understand that our job is to salvage Mother Nature. We are facing a formidable enemy in this field. It is the hunters... and to convince them to leave their guns on the wall is going to be very difficult.

With earth's burgeoning human population to feed we must turn to the sea with understanding and new technology. We need to farm it as we farm the land.