Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910 – 1997)
French naval officer, inventor, explorer and researcher.
No sooner does man discover intelligence than he tries to involve it in his own stupidity.
I am not a scientist. I am, rather, an impresario of scientists.
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.
The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it.
The best way to observe a fish is to become a fish.
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.
When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.
We have to prepare for what life could become in 40 years. We need to outline what is possible and what is impossible with the non-renewable resources of the Earth. What role will technological improvement play? Taking all this into account, what kind of life can we produce in the best way for 10 billion people? That's a problem that needs to be solved.
The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day.
Man, of all the animals, is probably the only one to regard himself as a great delicacy.
We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.
A lot of people attack the sea, I make love to it.
People protect what they love.
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.
Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and turn headlong down an immutable course.
The sea is the universal sewer.
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.
The sea, once it casts its spell, holds on in its net of wonder forever .