The idea of a group of elders is that, in past civilizations, they have linked worlds; the other world was also present in this one. There is also the argument that elders have "experience." The problem is that experience teaches fear of change. Experience kills imagination. Experience makes people conservative. What we are facing tomorrow requires the force of imagination, not wisdom from yesterday.

We must plant the sea and herd its animals using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization is all about - farming replacing hunting.

From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.

No sooner does man discover intelligence than he tries to involve it in his own stupidity.

I believe that national sovereignties will shrink in the face of universal interdependence.

The reason I love the sea I cannot explain - it's physical. When you dive you begin to feel like an angel. It's a liberation of your weight.

There was wildlife, untouched, a jungle at the border of the sea, never seen by those who floated on the opaque roof. Describing his early experience, in 1936, when a fellow naval officer, Philippe Tailliez, gave him goggles to see below the Mediterranean Sea surface.