Quote

The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, . . . when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man . . . . It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.

Rachel Carson

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Rachel Carson
Age: 56 †
Born: 1907
Born: May 27
Died: 1964
Died: April 14
Author
Conservationist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Marine Biologist
Non-Fiction Writer
Zoologist
Rachel Carson House
Rachel Louise Carson
Rachel L. Carson
Also
Turned
Armed
Earth
Supposed
Phrase
Men
Weapons
Misfortunes
Terrible
Arrogance
Alarming
Control
Primitive
Conceived
Modern
Phrases
Misfortune
Science
Turning
Convenience
Nature
Exists
Insects

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The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster.
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In its mysterious past it encompasses all the dim origins of life and receives in the end, after, it may be, many transmutations, the dead husks of that same life. For all at last return to the sea - to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever-flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.
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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.
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But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.
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Those who love and free nature are never alone.
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The Choice, after all, is ours to make.
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The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance.
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Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
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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, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.
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[Writing is] largely a matter of application and hard work, or writing and rewriting endlessly until you are satisfied that you have said what you want to say as clearly and simply as possible. For me that usually means many, many revisions.
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We have been troubled about the world, and had almost lost faith in man it helps to think about the long history of the earth, and of how life came to be. And when we think in terms of millions of years, we are not so impatient that our own problems be solved tomorrow.
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Beginnings are apt to be shadowy.
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The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.
Rachel Carson
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Autumn comes to the sea with a fresh blaze of phosphorescence, when every wave crest is aflame. Here and there the whole surface may glow with sheets of cold fire, while below schools of fish pour through the water like molten metal.
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When we go down to the low-tide line, we enter a world that is as old as the earth itself - the primeval meeting place of the elements of earth and water, a place of compromise and conflit and eternal change.
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Now I truly believe that we in this generation must come to terms with nature, and I think we're challenged, as mankind has never been challenged before, to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature but of ourselves.
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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.
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The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are not reserved for scientists but are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea and sky and their amazing life.
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Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life.
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The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind - that, and anger at the senseless, brutish things that were being done. . . . Now I can believe I have at least helped a little.
Rachel Carson