Top 40 Quotes by Barry Commoner

The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.

Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline - which prevented it from entering the environment.

It reflects a prevailing myth that production technology is no more amenable to human judgment or social interests than the laws of thermodynamics, atomic structure or biological inheritance.

The weapons were conceived and created by a small band of physicists and chemists; they remain a cataclysmic threat to the whole of human society and the natural environment.

It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions.

When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.

Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.

The methods that EPA introduced after 1970 to reduce air-pollutant emissions worked for a while, but over time have become progressively less effective.

After all, despite the economic advantage to firms that employed child labor, it was in the social interest, as a national policy, to abolish it - removing that advantage for all firms.

If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are looking the wrong way.