# Quote — Rachel L Carson, Silent Spring

> It is an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the public protests, confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizing pills of half truth. We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts.

- Author: [Rachel L Carson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/rachel-l-carson.md)
- Book: [Silent Spring](https://www.leafyquotes.com/rachel-l-carson/silent-spring.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson#Silent_Spring_(1962)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/rachel-l-carson/silent-spring/it-is-an-era

## More from this book

> Now at last, as it has become apparent that the heedless and unrestrained use of chemicals is a greater menace to ourselves than to the targets, the river which is the science of biotic control flows again, fed by new streams of thought.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/rachel-l-carson/silent-spring/now-at-last.md)

> It is ironic to think that man might determine his own future by something so seemingly trivial as the choice of an insect spray. All this has been risked-for what? Future historians may well be amazed by our distorted sense of proportion. How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind? Yet this is precisely what we have done. We have done it, moreover, for reasons that collapse the moment we examine them. We are told that the enormous and expanding use of pesticides is necessary to maintain farm production. Yet is our real problem not one of overproduction?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/rachel-l-carson/silent-spring/it-is-ironic.md)

> The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials.

p. 6 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/rachel-l-carson/silent-spring/the-most-alarming.md)