Top 78 Quotes & Sayings by Jacques Yves Cousteau

Mankind has probably done more damage to the Earth in the 20th century than in all of previous human history.

The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.

The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it.

No sooner does man discover intelligence than he tries to involve it in his own stupidity.

The biggest obstacle was mixing abortion with overpopulation. These are two things that have nothing to do with each other.

The real cure for our environmental problems is to understand that our job is to salvage Mother Nature. We are facing a formidable enemy in this field. It is the hunters... and to convince them to leave their guns on the wall is going to be very difficult.

The awareness of our environment came progressively in all countries with different outlets.

We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.

No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal.

The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers. Our survival is no more than a question of 25, 50 or perhaps 100 years.

The sea is the universal sewer.

People protect what they love.

However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day.

What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on.

A lot of people attack the sea, I make love to it.

It takes generosity to discover the whole through others. If you realize you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert.

We must plant the sea and herd its animals using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization is all about - farming replacing hunting.

Farming as we do it is hunting, and in the sea we act like barbarians.

From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.

Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.

If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed and if we are not willing to change, we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect.

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.

I am not a scientist. I am, rather, an impresario of scientists.

Man, of all the animals, is probably the only one to regard himself as a great delicacy.

If we were logical, the future would be bleak, indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work.

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.

I believe that national sovereignties will shrink in the face of universal interdependence.

The future of nutrition is found in the oceans

It is fashionable nowadays to talk about the endless riches of the sea. The ocean is regarded as a sort of bargain basement, but I don't agree with that estimate. People don't realize that water in the liquid state is very rare in the universe. Away from earth it is usually a gas. This moisture is a blessed treasure, and it is our basic duty, if we don't want to commit suicide, to preserve it.

The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed.

Our society is turning toward more and more needless consumption. It is a vicious circle that I compare to cancer . . . . Should we eliminate suffering, diseases? The idea is beautiful, but perhaps not a benefit for the long term. We should not allow our dread of diseases to endanger the future of our species. . . . In order to stabilize world population, we need to eliminate 350,000 people a day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it's just as bad not to say it.

The idea of a group of elders is that, in past civilizations, they have linked worlds; the other world was also present in this one. There is also the argument that elders have "experience." The problem is that experience teaches fear of change. Experience kills imagination. Experience makes people conservative. What we are facing tomorrow requires the force of imagination, not wisdom from yesterday.

I wake up saying, I'm still alive; a miracle. And so I keep on pushing.

However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day. I believe that national sovereignties will shrink in the face of universal interdependence. The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: We are all in the same boat.

There is about as much educational benefit to be gained in studying dolphins in captivity as there would be studying mankind by only observing prisoners held in solitary confinement.

Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today

When we return wild animals to nature, we merely return them to what is already theirs. For man cannot give wild animals freedom, they can only take it away.

It's terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn't even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable.

There are no boundaries in the real Planet Earth. No United States, no Soviet Union, no China, no Taiwan...Rivers flow unimpeded across the swaths of continents. The persistent tides - the pulse of the sea - do not discriminate; they push against all the varied shores on Earth.

In order to save the planet it would be necessary to kill 350,000 people per day.

If human civilization is going to invade the waters of the earth, then let it be first of all to carry a message of respect.

The best way to observe a fish is to become a fish.

In the deep space of the sea I have found my moon

We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking.

We must go and see for ourselves.

Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and run headlong down an immutable course

I was playing when I invented the aqualung. I think play is the most serious thing in the world.

The little bee returns with evening's gloom, To join her comrades in the braided hive, Where, housed beside their might honey-comb, They dream their polity shall long survive. Charles Tennyson Turner - A Summer Night in the Bee Hive The happiness of the bee & the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that & to wonder at it.

The United Nation's goal is to reduce population selectively by encouraging abortion, forced sterilization, and control of human reproduction, and regards two-thirds of the human population as excess baggage, with 350,000 people to be eliminated per day.

Through the window of my mask I see a wall of coral, its surface a living kaleidoscope of lilac flecks, splashes of gold, reddish streaks and yellows, all tinged by the familiar transparent blue of the sea.

Man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.

Perhaps the time has come to formulate a moral code which would govern our relations with the great creatures of the sea as well as with those on dry land. That this will come to pass is my dear wish.

The future is in the hands of those who explore... and from all the beauty they discover while crossing perpetually receding frontiers, they develop for nature and for humankind an infinite love.

We must alert and organise the world's people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.

Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage.

Buoyed by water, he can fly in any direction - up, down, sideways - by merely flipping his hand. Under water, man becomes an archangel.

For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.

All life is part of a complex relationship in which each is dependent upon the others, taking from, giving to and living with all the rest.

The reason I love the sea I cannot explain - it's physical. When you dive you begin to feel like an angel. It's a liberation of your weight.