Rachel Carson Quotes

“reporter for a San Francisco newspaper quoted large sections of her address, but insensitively described Carson as a “middle-aged, arthritis-crippled spinster,”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“Finally, mixed in with all the other arguments was Carson’s gender. She kept cats and loved birds. She was a nature writer, a mystic, a devotee of the balance of nature. Her arguments were exaggerations born of hysteria at worst and an overly sensitive nature at best. Reason had been sacrificed to sentiment. Behind these charges was understandable resentment of Carson’s aggressive attack on the scientific establishment and on a male-dominated technology. Among her other errors, Miss Carson had overstepped her place.6 While”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“The industry-led attack on Carson began early. Former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson is credited by some for framing it in its crudest terms in a letter to Dwight Eisenhower, but the remark was repeated so many times that its origin became inconsequential. Referring to Carson’s articles in The New Yorker, Benson supposedly wondered “Why a spinster with no children was so concerned about genetics?” His explanation was that she was “probably a Communist.” The question reflected increasing attention on Carson’s gender by those who commented on Silent Spring and its reserved author. The press was inordinately interested in Carson’s marital status. She was, after all, physically attractive, quiet, and feminine. A reporter from the Baltimore Sun asked her why she never married. “No time,” Rachel responded, and went on to say that she sometimes envied male writers who married because they had wives to take care of them, provide meals, and spare them from unnecessary interruptions.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“But many in science, government, and industry understood that the essential issue that Carson had raised was not one that could be won or lost by appeals to the consumer. They recognized Silent Spring for what it was: a fundamental social critique of a gospel of technological progress. Carson had attacked the integrity of the scientific establishment, its moral leadership, and its direction of society. Holding up before them their irresolute carelessness of the natural world, she dared to make their sins public. The fury with which they attacked her reflected the accuracy of her moral charges. Since her facts were essentially irrefutable, they disparaged Carson as the agent of a message that had to be suppressed.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“Udall remembers that he felt Carson was at a disadvantage that evening because of her gender and because of her very solemn style of speaking. Ethel Kennedy, the president’s sister-in-law, who was present, seemed overwhelmed by the factual details. But regardless of how Carson had presented her case, the attention of the group would have been elsewhere. Attorney General Robert Kennedy never did attend the discussion. Instead he spent the evening closeted in Udall’s study on the telephone, dealing with events that in a matter of days became the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“Howard noted that while Carson was unmarried, she was not a feminist. “I’m not interested in things done by women or by men,” Carson told her, “but in things done by people.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“Brooks was more accurate when he told Carson that he thought Silent Spring would be “the most important book of the decade.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“They wanted to put a copy of Silent Spring in the hands of policy makers, cabinet secretaries, White House staff, congressional committee chairmen and their staffs, conservation organization directors, and women’s organization leaders.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“Our choice is not, then, the stark and simple one: ‘Shall we have birds or shall we have trees?’” Carson wrote. “If we continue our present methods we shall probably end with neither.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“Although the Freemans were nominally Republican and Carson a Democrat, their love of nature provided common ground. As a government employee, Carson had of necessity been circumspect about criticizing government policies and careful not to express her political views publicly. After her resignation, she was no longer under such prohibitions and soon had occasion to speak out.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“They returned to Rachel’s room at the Sheraton, strangely shy now that they were at last together, then took the train to West Bridgewater.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“That summer Carson sorely needed a devoted friend and kindred spirit, someone who would listen to her without advising and accept her wholly, the writer as well as the woman. She felt alone much of the time, without anyone with whom she could share her private world. The companionship she had known with her mother for so long was no longer available to her nor especially comforting. Maria Carson’s emotional demands upon her daughter increased as her physical powers diminished.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“Drexel’s doctorate followed an honorary doctorate in literature from her alma mater, Pennsylvania College for Women, awarded on “moving-up day” in May, and one in science from Oberlin College in Ohio in June. Although Carson was besieged with requests from other institutions, she agreed only to these three and to an honorary degree in literature from Smith College the following June.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“Almost exactly a year later, the New York Zoological Society, where Carson had once unsuccessfully applied for employment as a writer, presented her with its Gold Medal for her contributions as an interpreter of the sea, rounding out a full year of continuous public acclaim.1 Carson was expected to speak at the Geographical”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“Rachel’s field notes also contained lighter moments, as when she picked up a dime-size baby ghost crab. Afraid it did not know its way home, she made it a new hole with her finger in the sand. “He darted into it,” she wrote, “and we were both happy.”29”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“The only school Maria Carson ever considered for Rachel was Pennsylvania College for Women (PCW). Then as now, PCW (later Chatham College) was an elite private college in Pittsburgh. For”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“The only school Maria Carson ever considered for Rachel was Pennsylvania College for Women (PCW). Then as now, PCW (later Chatham College) was an elite private college in Pittsburgh.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“By the time she entered high school, Rachel had embraced her mother’s view that intellect and self-worth were far more important than material possessions or social recognition.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“Rachel Carson was an unlikely person to start any sort of popular movement. She treasured her solitude, defended her privacy, rarely joined any organization; but she meant to bear witness. She wrote a revolutionary book in terms that were acceptable to a middle class emerging from the lethargy of postwar affluence and woke them to their neglected responsibilities. It was a book in which she shared her vision of life one last time. In the sea and the bird’s song she had discovered the wonder and mystery of life. Her witness for these, and the integrity of all life, would make a difference.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“Her words marked an end and a beginning. As she spoke, Rachel Carson was dying of cancer. This appearance, and one two days later before the Senate Committee on Commerce, would be her last on Capitol Hill. Several present that sunny spring morning in June 1963 might have predicted that Carson’s recommendations eventually would be translated into public policy, but probably no one could have guessed that as she spoke, her vision was already shaping a powerful social movement that would alter the course of American history.”
― Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature