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Rachel Carson
(27 May 1907 - 14 Apr 1964)
American marine biologist, conservationist and writer whose book Silent Spring (1962), denounced the indiscriminate use of pesticides, and helped launch the modern environmental movement.
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Science Quotes by Rachel Carson (8 quotes)
A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.
— Rachel Carson
quoted in The Last Word, ed. Carolyn Warner, ch. 28 (1992)
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.[On the effect of chemical insecticides and fertilizers.]
— Rachel Carson
In Silent Spring, (1962), 297.
Even in the vast and mysterious reaches of the sea we are brought back to the fundamental truth that nothing lives to itself.
— Rachel Carson
Silent Spring, Introduction.
If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.
— Rachel Carson
quoted in The Last Word, ed. Carolyn Warner, ch. 19 (1992)
It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.
— Rachel Carson
The Sea Around Us (1951).
Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.
— Rachel Carson
On the effect of chemical insecticides and fertilizers, Silent Spring, Houghton Mifflin (1962)
The “control of nature” is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and the convenience of man.
— Rachel Carson
Silent Spring (1962, 2002), 297.
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.
— Rachel Carson
explaining her motivation for writing the book Silent Spring
See also:
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27 May - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Carson's birth. 
Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. - book suggestion.
Booklist for Rachel Carson.
At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes--an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. -- Carl Sagan
