David R. Brower Quotes

The more we pour the big machines, the fuel, the pesticides, the herbicides, the fertilizer and chemicals into farming, the more we knock out the mechanism that made it all work in the first place.
David R. Brower

Work, Made, Big

All I know about thermal pollution is that if we continue our present rate of growth in electrical energy consumption it will simply take, by the year 2000, all our freshwater streams to cool the generators and reactors.
David R. Brower

Cool, Energy, Year

Even if you build the perfect reactor, you're still saddled with a people problem and an equipment problem.
David R. Brower

Perfect, Problem, Build

A great deal of pressure was then built up to remove me from the club and my resignation was, finally, a forced one.
David R. Brower

Great, Deal, Pressure

At that time a senator who was on the Joint Committee of Atomic Energy said rather quietly, 'You know, we're having a little problem with waste these days.' I didn't know what he meant then, but I know now.
David R. Brower

Time, Problem, Energy

Once we open the door to the plutonium economy, we expose ourselves to absolutely terrible, horrifying risks from these people.
David R. Brower

Door, Once, Ourselves

Perhaps we'll realize that each of us has not one vote but ten thousand or a million.
David R. Brower

Vote, Realize, Perhaps

Apollo 13, as you may remember, gave us a reactor that is bubbling away right now somewhere in the Pacific. It's supposed to be bubbling away on the moon, but it's in the Pacific Ocean instead.
David R. Brower

May, Remember, Away

Bring diversity back to agriculture. That's what made it work in the first place.
David R. Brower

Work, Made, Place

For how many people do you think might yet stand on this planet before the sun grows cold? That's the responsibility we hold in our hands.
David R. Brower

Before, Sun, Stand

I began working with the John Muir Institute and then started helping found Friends of the Earth organizations here and there in other countries. That pretty well brings us up to the present.
David R. Brower

Friends, Pretty, Working

I believe that the average guy in the street will give up a great deal, if he really understands the cost of not giving it up. In fact, we may find that, while we're drastically cutting our energy consumption, we're actually raising our standard of living.
David R. Brower

Great, Giving, May

I don't think we have very good records about what they were thinking except, as I pointed out earlier today, that they did invent our political system.
David R. Brower

Good, Today, Political

I sort of kept my hand in writing and went to work for the Sierra Club in '52, walked the plank there in '69, founded Friends of the Earth and the League of Conservation Voters after that.
David R. Brower

Work, Writing, Friends

I was actually telling people that - by harnessing the atom - we could enter a new era of unlimited power that would do away with the need to dam our beautiful streams.
David R. Brower

Power, Beautiful, Away

I will say this, - though: If it is true that fusion will put unlimited amounts of energy into our hands, then I'm worried. Our record on this score is extremely poor.
David R. Brower

True, Put, Energy

Is the minor convenience of allowing the present generation the luxury of doubling its energy consumption every 10 years worth the major hazard of exposing the next 20,000 generations to this lethal waste?
David R. Brower

Energy, Worth, Next

It is absolutely imperative that we protect, preserve and pass on this genetic heritage for man and every other living thing in as good a condition as we received it.
David R. Brower

Environmental, Good, Living

It seems that every time mankind is given a lot of energy, we go out and wreck something with it.
David R. Brower

Environmental, Time, Energy

It's like turning the space program over to the Long Island Railroad.
David R. Brower

Long, Space, Turning

It's very hard for me to know what to say about fusion right now, inasmuch as it is not yet scientifically feasible. I just can't understand how so many people are able to predict so much about something that still isn't scientifically possible.
David R. Brower

Hard, Understand, Able

Perhaps most ridiculous of all is the suggestion that we 'keep' our radioactive garbage for the use of our descendants. This 'solution', I think, requires an immediate poll of the next 20,000 generations.
David R. Brower

Keep, Next, Ridiculous

'Realistic' is a loaded word for me. Anyone who uses the word 'realistic' is all bad.
David R. Brower

Bad, Word, Anyone

Some otherwise sane scientists have seriously proposed that we tuck this deadly garbage under the edges of drifting continents but how can they be sure the moving land masses will climb over the waste and not just push it forward?
David R. Brower

Forward, Moving, Sure

The risk presented by these lethal wastes is like no other risk, and we should not be expected to accept it or to project it into the future in order for manufacturers and utilities to make a dollar killing now.
David R. Brower

Future, Accept, Risk

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Environmentalist

Born: July 1, 1912

Died: November 5, 2000

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