Knowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent... It is, in the deepest sense, a privilege as well as a duty to speak out to many thousands of people.

Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world.

Science is part of the reality of living; it is the what, the how, and the why of everything in our experience.

It is not half so important to know as to feel.

Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life.

The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became. I realized that here was the material for a book. What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important.

As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life - a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no "high-minded orientation," no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper.