Eradication of microbial disease is a will-o’-the-wisp; pursuing it leads into a morass of hazy biological concepts and half truths.
It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life.
Men are naturally most impressed by diseases which have obvious manifestations, yet some of their worst enemies creep on them unobtrusively.
Social evolution may be the result of intention, but it rarely, if ever, produces the result intended.
There is an unbroken continuum from the wisdom of the body to the wisdom of the mind, from the wisdom of the individual to the wisdom of the race.
Whatever his inhibitions and tastes, Western man believes in the natural holiness of seminudism and raw vegetable juice, because these have become for him symbols of unadultered nature.
A sense of continuity with the rest of creation is a form of religious experience essential to sanity.
Human life is now molded to a large extent by the changes that man has brought about in his external environment and by his attempts at controlling body and soul.
Man not only survives and functions in his environment, he shapes it and he is shaped by it.
The belief that we can manage the Earth and improve on Nature is probably the ultimate expression of human conceit, but it has deep roots in the past and is almost universal.
The most important pathological effects of pollution are extremely delayed and indirect.
Man shapes himself through decisions that shape his environment.
Nature always strikes back. It takes all the running we can do to remain in the same place.
Wherever human beings are concerned, trend is not destiny.
The earth is literally our mother, not only because we depend on her for nurture and shelter but even more because the human sepcies has been shaped by her in the womb of evolution. Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature.
Gauss replied, when asked how soon he expected to reach certain mathematical conclusions, that he had them long ago, all he was worrying about was how to reach them!
Biologically, man is still the great amateur of the animal kingdom; he is unique in his lack of anatomical and physiological specialization.
Human life implies adventure, and there is no adventure without struggles and dangers.
It is a disturbing fact that Western civilization, which claims to have achieved the highest standard of health in history, finds itself compelled to spend ever-increasing sums for the control of disease.
One may wonder indeed whether the pretense of superior health is not itself rapidly becoming a mental aberration.
With reference to life there is not one nature; there are only associations of states and circumstances, varying from place to place and from time to time.