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Our soaring population may suggest success as a species, but the environmental price of modern civilization is high, and our prosperity may be short-lived.

— Sylvia Earle Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans (1995)

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More quotes by Sylvia Earle

As it turns out, the future of the ocean, the creatures who live there, and our own future are inextricably linked.

The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean's Are One (2009)

There's plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water.

Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans (1995)

This much is certain: We have the power to damage the sea, but no sure way to heal the harm.

Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans (1995)

Astronomer Carl Sagan noted that even when it is viewed from so far away that it is a pale dot, Earth is discernibly blue.

The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean's Are One (2009)

Highways crisscross the land, simultaneously forming pathways and barriers.

Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans (1995)

All Sylvia Earle quotes →

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

Confucius

Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power.

Martin Buber Between Man and Man (1965)

The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Sylvia Earle (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.