# Quote — Rachel L Carson, Silent Spring

> We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road-the one "less traveled by"-offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of our earth. The choice, after all, is ours to make.

- 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)
- Page: 277
- 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/we-stand-now

## 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)