Jacques Cousteau Quotes

You ain't supposed to get salmon when they're swimming upstream to spawn. But if you're hungry, you do.

I think having toured the world and seeing many places, I've just been blown away by how we've really scarred our home. I'm as guilty as the next person if not more so. I travel a lot. The damage we do to our planet is huge.

We have serious challenges regarding climate change, unsustainable use of natural resources, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, forests and farmland. Not to mention the huge inequality still prevailing in several parts of the planet.

The common liberal orthodoxy that living close to the land leads to eco-awareness is historically naive, considering that Mesopotamia, northern Africa, and the Mayan civilization were ruined by people who had lived there quite a long while.

The more we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival.

It is shocking to smite down trees for mere decorations.

If a man farms his land to the waste of the soil or the tress, he destroys not only his own assets but Nature's assets.

There probably were floods when our land was newly settled but before we cut our trees so recklessly they were not so serious. If we go to the headwaters of our rivers and we will find the cause and the results which follow in the wake of man's destructive ignorance.

It saddens me that in the 21st century, with all our knowledge and power, we are hearing more and more stories of possible extinctions due to people's choice. We are responsible for our choices and the only ones capable of changing our future.

Human beings are just animals who will just eat and take advantage of any source of energy until it runs out, and then there'll be catastrophe.

Harvesting the biosphere is still the most fundamental human activity. Without that, everybody's dead, really. We could do quite well without microchips, or the business site of 'Atlantic Monthly,' the gated communities, Guccis, and high-growth GDP. But we cannot do without harvesting the crops and cutting down the wood.

Instead of trying to understand agriculture in its own terms, acknowledge that agriculture ultimately comes out of nature. Right now agriculture is the No. 1 threat to biodiversity on the planet.

Every time we burn a gallon of gas or an acre of rain forest, aren't we killing the future to preserve the present?

. . . had I a river I would gladly let all honest anglers that use the fly cast line in it, but, but where there is no protection, then nets, poison, dynamite, slaughter of fingerlings, and unholy baits devastate the fish, so that 'free fishing' spells no fishing at all.

Thirty years ago, if you said the country was living beyond its means, people would have thought about economics. Now, if you talk about the country, or the planet living beyond its means, you think about the environment. We are taking out more than we are giving back. We are consuming energy, water, and other natural resources in a way that is leading to huge and often irreversible damage to the planet. So too are most other developed nations. And so too will China and India if they follow the same path of economic development as us

In the case of the environment, there's no one to bail it out.

We must use the wrath of nature as our teacher.

The plundering for profit of the world's natural resources has threatened the very sustainability of the planet.

It is undeniable that the looming environmental crisis is partly the consequence of population growth.

The fossil fuel industry is destroying our planet and everything that we love.

Humans have occupied a position in nature that they should not. It is impossible for humans to conquer nature.

I have a lot of love for nature, trees, animals and greenery, and I feel that if I did not exist, there'd be no greenery on the face of the earth.

I became an environmentalist because I love the living world, but I spend much of my life thinking about electricity, industrial processes and civil engineering.

If you're trashing your own country, ruining the soils, contaminating the waters and the air, cutting down trees, overfishing the lakes, rivers and oceans, you're not much of a patriot.

My father gave me this poster from National Geographic back in the very early 70s, so I was a young teenager. It showed how man polluted his world. And the issues that they talked about, whether it was water pollution, air, or terrestrial... The issues that they talk about on this poster are still very much present today.