Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Jacques Cousteau, formally Hacques-Yves Cousteau, known as 'le Commandant Cousteau' or 'Captain Cousteau'

French Naval Officer, Explorer, Ecologist, Filmmaker, Innovator, Scientist, Photographer, Author and Researcher

"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."

"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. "

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

"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. "

"In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 per day."

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

"People protect what they love. "

"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."

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

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

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

"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 sea is the universal sewer. "

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

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