Jacques-Yves Cousteau Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Farming as we do it is hunting, and in the sea we act like barbarians.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
From the vast expanses of its surface waters to its beaches and marshes and tidelands and mangrove swamps, from its many thousands of miles of rocky shores to its deepest and darkest abyss, the sea produces life in fantastic abundance.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
A paleontologist holds the thread of evolution in his hands by combining the biological and geological evidence in fossils.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Through the window of my mask I see a wall of coral, its surface a living kaleidoscope of lilac flecks, splashes of gold, reddish streaks and yellows, all tinged by the familiar transparent blue of the sea.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
The adventure of life as explored by man is truly a mystery tale. As in any good detective story, the evidence has been present all along but not until many apparently unrelated facts were put together could logical conclusions solve the mystery.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
How dangerous are those sea animals with bad reputations? A few actually kill. A few maim. Some are poisonous when eaten by man. Most sting, stab,or poison and cause mild to severe discomfort to man. Yet man is one of the larger beings that sea creatures encounter, and these poisons usually can't kill him.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
The glory of nature provides evidence that God exists

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
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.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and run headlong down an immutable course. It happened to me at Le Mourillon on that summer's day, when my eyes were opened to the sea.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
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.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed — if we are not willing — we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
I am not a scientist. I am, rather, an impresario of scientists.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Sometime we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and run headlong down an immutable course.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Buoyed by water, he can fly in any direction — up, down, sideways — by merely flipping his hand. Under water, man becomes an archangel.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
There are a few animals that have won themselves a bad reputation even though they have little or no effect on man. They have won their rating through man's interpretation of their attitude towards lower animals. These animals have been seen feeding in what appears to be a savage manner. But this behavior may perhaps be comparable to a man tearing the flesh off a chicken leg with his teeth.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Man, of all the animals, is probably the only one to regard himself as a great delicacy.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
In the last few decades, a terribly pernicious rumor has been circulated by the press. It claims, exhibiting a level of stupidity heretofore considered impossible, that a human being could crawl through the arteries of a blue whale. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. I do not know why this deleterious rumor has been systematically repeated, but its very existence is an ugly cancer upon the face of science.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
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.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Mankind has probably done more damage to the earth in the 20th century than in all of previous human history.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
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.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau