Quotes from Jacques Yves Cousteau

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

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.

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

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.

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.

We must go and see for ourselves.

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.

We know how to organize warfare, but do we know how to act when confronted with peace?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I said that the oceans were sick but they're not going to die. There is no death possible in the oceans - there will always be life - but they're getting sicker every year.

People protect what they love.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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