Quotes from Paul Watson

You will not ever perceive the truth that is reality. There are many realities.

My grandfather carried me around on his shoulders at 85.

People feel good about giving money to Greenpeace.

Greenpeace has a fast ship that could stop the whalers cold.

Japan is a bully nation that takes what it wants and threatens any who oppose it.

I experienced the California Northridge Earthquake of 1994 and the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, and I have thus seen firsthand how terrible and awesomely devastating a force of nature can be.

No words can describe the personal liberation that heading seaward bestows upon me. In this aquatic realm, no man or woman is subject to the petty decrees of social bureaucracy.

In Ecuador, if I go after an Ecuadoran, I'm in trouble; if I go after a Costa Rican, I'm a hero.

I have actually led more expeditions to Antarctica than Scott, Amundsen, and Shackleton put together.

I've had a lot of disappointments. I think my biggest disappointment is the failure of elected officials to make good on their promises in regards to the environment or anything else, really. I have very little faith in politicians.

I'm never horrible to anybody. My problem, and you can ask any of my friends, is that I'm too nice to everybody.

I would just say that nobody could do what I do unless you had a big ego. It's the only way you can really put it. You have to be arrogant enough to challenge the arrogance of the human race.

I'm thankful to have time to write.

The seal hunt has made me ashamed to be a Canadian.

Sometimes we are separated by differences, and sometimes we are united by common ideals of respect and compassion.

That's the thing with celebrities: the media can't ignore them.

Killing a baby seal is about the easiest thing you can do if you're inclined to be sadistic; you certainly can't say there's any sport in it - the animal is totally defenceless.

When I hear so-called professional journalists ask why we have celebrities speak for us and for the animals, the environment or social causes, I marvel at their denial of the rules of their own trade.

The Sea Shepherd crew is doing what governments should be doing, but refuse to do themselves, because of the threats of trade retaliation from Japan.

You can't love nature with a gun

In December 2012, the U.S. 9th district court granted a temporary injunction to the Japanese whalers that ordered the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society U.S.A. to not approach within 500 yards of the whaling vessels.

We'll lose more species of plants and animals between 2000 and 2065 than we've lost in the last 65 million years. If we don't find answers to these problems, we're gonna be victims of this extinction event that we're at fault for.

The tragedy is that there is so much more incentive - money - to destroy the ecology than there is to preserve it.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society recognizes that the deaths of four sealers is a tragedy, but Sea Shepherd also recognizes that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seal pups is an even greater tragedy.