Peter Benchley Quotes

Sharks are just evil bastards. I'm quite happy if all the sharks just went, because they eat fish and us. And we need the fish.

Many people continue to think of sharks as man-eating beasts. Sharks are enormously powerful and wild creatures, but you're more likely to be killed by your kitchen toaster than a shark!

Twenty-five years ago nobody knew much about white sharks.

The whale is endangered, while the ant continues to do just fine.

I still think there's a big part of the population that has a lot of misinformation about sharks. But I think it's beginning to change a little bit. As good information about sharks permeates popular culture, things may start to change.

We provoke a shark every time we enter the water where sharks happen to be, for we forget: The ocean is not our territory - it's theirs.

The Oceanic White Tip is considered one of the most dangerous sharks in the sea along with the Great White and Tiger. It is responsible for some of the most famous episodes of man-eating in history, such as when the U.S.S. Indianapolis sank in 1945.

Sharks don't target human beings, and they certainly don't hold grudges.

Out here in California, in the Pacific Ocean, the sharks have a bad attitude.

Sharks freak me out.

I don't know a single surfer who would say, 'Gee, I wish there were no sharks in the ocean.'

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.

There's still a lot of people out there who think the only good shark is a dead shark.

People don't need to be scared. I tickle sharks. I do, when they swim by.

If I swim in the ocean, I have a shark thought. Not a bad one, but just a little one.

On Cape Cod, great white shark stocks have been growing, or at least becoming more concentrated, because of the multiplying numbers of seals around Monomoy Island. We are fortunate to have such abundance of these sharks in our own waters. Around the globe, we are killing in excess of 100 million sharks each year.

I hope that 'Jaws' will have brought sharks into the public interest at a time when we desperately need to reevaluate our care for the environment.

I don't use cages - I've been surrounded by 150 to 200 sharks, not once ever been close to being bitten.

I don't like the idea of being eaten by a shark. I like to swim in the ocean, and I think much more about sharks than anyone should. I really resent the fact that my oceangoing experiences are ruined by 'Jaws.'

Nature will take precedence over the needs of the modern man.

I think great whites are the most beautiful and perfect creatures I've ever seen.

Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain.

I have photographed sharks in waters around the globe, and I always want more and yearn to peer deeper into their world. To feed my passion and to raise awareness, I developed a story about sharks for 'National Geographic' magazine.

All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.

I am terrified of sharks, so I don't surf!