Roger Payne Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

Many people view the ocean as a flat featureless plain. But this is an erroneous perception. In truth it is a place of great complexity and diversity, filled with excitement and hidden drama.

Roger Payne
You cannot assess an acoustic phenomenon visually any more than you can judge a visual phenomenon acoustically - if you decide that the brightest rainbows accompany the loudest thunder you will sometimes be right of course, but only by chance. Most of the time you will be wrong.

Roger Payne
Small things lead frantic lives. When a passing ant sets its foot in a drop of water, the amoebas in that drop experience raging tidal waves, while to the ant the footsteps of a mouse on the roof of its galleries must rattle all the cupboards and shake the pupae off the walls.

Roger Payne
The extraordinary things that occur within its [the sea's] vast spaces and corridors must in most part be deduced, for the sea is not a great communicator but the strong, silent type - a mute and patient (though sometimes wildly destructive) companion.

Roger Payne
As a consequence of their great size, whales escape much turmoil. With increasing size comes increasing serenity. Large creatures find less and less that is significant enough to be annoying and therefore experience fewer extremes, less upheaval.

Roger Payne
In my own experience I have found that at their best the revelations of science are as inspiring as art.... I feel that science has a role to play just in conservation (in my view the most important human activity) but also in the more spiritual parts of our lives.

Roger Payne
Remote and imperturbable, the lives of whales are somehow enough to match any fantasy humanity can create. They are what we have lost, what we yearn for.

Roger Payne