Any attempt to shape the world and modify human personality in order to create a self-chosen pattern of life involves many unknown consequences. Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back. The multiplicity of determinants which affect biological systems limits the power of the experimental method to predict their trends and behavior.

The most important pathological effects of pollution are extremely delayed and indirect.

Gauss replied, when asked how soon he expected to reach certain mathematical conclusions, that he had them long ago, all he was worrying about was how to reach them!

A sense of continuity with the rest of creation is a form of religious experience essential to sanity.

The earth is literally our mother, not only because we depend on her for nurture and shelter but even more because the human sepcies has been shaped by her in the womb of evolution. Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature.

Men are naturally most impressed by diseases which have obvious manifestations, yet some of their worst enemies creep on them unobtrusively.

Nature always strikes back. It takes all the running we can do to remain in the same place.