Jacques Cousteau Quotes

For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.

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

Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.

When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself

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

All life is part of a complex relationship in which each is dependent upon the others, taking from, giving to and living with all the rest.

The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it

We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking.

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

It takes generosity to discover the whole through others. If you realize you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert.

Every explorer I have met has been driven—not coincidentally but quintessentially—by curiosity, by a single-minded, insatiable, and even jubilant need to know.

He’s not lying. I can assure you, he’s part fish. Jacques Cousteau has nothing on him. Aquaman, either. (Solin)

There’s about as much educational benefit studying dolphins in captivity as there would be studying mankind by only observing prisoners held in solitary.

I swam across the rocks and compared myself favorably with the sars. To swim fishlike, horizontally, was the logical method in a medium eight hundred times denser than air. To halt and hang attached to nothing, no lines or air pipe to the surface, was a dream. At night I had often had visions of flying by extending my arms as wings. Now I flew without wings. (Since that first aqualung flight, I have never had a dream of flying.)

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

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

On aime ce qui nous a émerveillé, et on protège ce que l'on aime.

To restate an old law - when a man bites a fish, that's good, but when a fish bites a man, that's bad. This is one way of saying it's all right if man kills an animal, but if an animal attacks man, the act is reprehensible. The animal is labelled "killer," something to be feared, hated, shunned, punished, even killed by man. 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. Very often these poisons are used defensively against predators and offensively in food gathering. 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.

If we were logical, the future would be bleak indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work.

Human beings had polluted the seawater and mechanically destroyed the nearby coast; all life had paid this price. Often, in airports, on sidewalks, at restaurants, children and adults alike stop me to ask about barracuda and sharks; killer whales; the deadly sorcery of the Bermuda Triangle; the Loch Ness Monster. When I saw Le Veyron, I believed that the sea’s most monstrous force doesn’t live in Loch Ness. It lives in us.

no one can absolutely control the direction of his life; but each person can certainly influence it. The armchair explorers who complain that they never got their “one lucky shot” were never really infected by the incurable drive to explore. Those who have the bug—go.

Some of these islanders dutifully recited for us their ancient law: “Take no more from the sea in one day than there are people in your village. If you observe this rule, the bonito will run well again tomorrow.

We only protect what we love, we only love what we understand, and we only understand what we are taught.

For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century, he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it." —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 is going on. —JACQUES COUSTEAU

To enlarge the human perspective, to build on knowledge for future generations, to identify dangers, and to chart the course to a better world: If these are the goals of the explorer, then everyone—voyager, scientist and citizen, parent and child—is engaged in humanity’s momentous expedition.

The Everlasting Staircase" Jeffrey McDaniel When the call came, saying twenty-four hours to live, my first thought was: can't she postpone her exit from this planet for a week? I've got places to do, people to be. Then grief hit between the ribs, said disappear or reappear more fully. so I boarded a red eyeball and shot across America, hoping the nurses had enough quarters to keep the jukebox of Grandma's heart playing. She grew up poor in Appalachia. And while world war II functioned like Prozac for the Great Depression, she believed poverty was a double feature, that the comfort of her adult years was merely an intermission, that hunger would hobble back, hurl its prosthetic leg through her window, so she clipped, clipped, clipped -- became the Jacques Cousteau of the bargain bin, her wetsuit stuffed with coupons. And now --pupils fixed, chin dangling like the boots of a hanged man -- I press my ear to her lampshade-thin chest and listen to that little soldier march toward whatever plateau, or simply exhaust his arsenal of beats. I hate when people ask if she even knew I was there. The point is I knew, holding the one-sided conversation of her hand. Once I believed the heart was like a bar of soap -- the more you use it, the smaller it gets; care too much and it'll snap off in your grasp. But when Grandma's last breath waltzed from that room, my heart opened wide like a parachute, and I realized she didn't die. She simply found a silence she could call her own.

what motivated explorers? What inspired Magellan, battered by South America’s strange williwaw winds, to hold to his course through an unknown strait with no guarantee that it would lead to an untraversed sea? What makes adult and child alike feel so desperate at the prospect of abandoning their advance along shining rails, across shining seas, that lead beyond the boundaries of their familiar world? What inspires an explorer to undertake a voyage with no destination, to search with no objective, to travel with no itinerary other than the uncharted, the unfathomed, the unexpected?

When I was little, I didn’t understand that you could change a few sounds in a name or a phrase and have it mean something entirely different. When I told teachers my name was Benna and they said, “Donna who?” I would say, “Donna Gilbert.” I thought close was good enough, that sloppiness was generally built into the language. I thought Bing Crosby and Bill Crosby were the same person. That Buddy Holly and Billie Holiday were the same person. That Leon Trotsky and Leo Tolstoy were the same person. It was a shock for me quite late in life to discover that Jean Cocteau and Jacques Cousteau were not even related. Meaning, if it existed at all, was unstable and could not survive the slightest reshuffling of letters. One gust of wind and Santa became Satan. A slip of the pen and pears turned into pearls. A little interior decorating and the world became her twold, an ungrammatical and unkind assessment of an aging aunt in a singles bar. Add a d to poor, you got droop. It was that way in biology, too. Add a chromosome, get a criminal. Subtract one, get an idiot or a chipmunk. That was the way with things.

How many of these people rise to their feet or fall to their knees in cathedrals, temples, synagogues, mosques, reciting the word of their God by rote, all the while ignoring the living word of God just outside the window? How many read scriptures that praise their God’s creation but acquiesce when damage is done to it? Daily newspapers report on politicians, presidents, ayatollahs who righteously and regularly proclaim that they lead their nations in accordance with the word of their God; we hear of martyrs who have died because they have refused to repudiate their beliefs, of revolutions, civil wars, holy wars—all waged by people who are willing to fight for the right to believe what they choose. They choose to believe in a God who has issued divine commands; how many honor His divine commands to safeguard the environment? How many instead behave as latter-day Peters, vociferously attesting to their belief in God but denying Him when the opportunity arises to protect the environment as holy writings mandate?

Maybe a young Jacques Cousteau...?" Sadie was still working on the boy in the suit. "But that would just be silly. I mean, a suit...? On.No." Apparently our scrutiny hadn't gone unnoticed. Teddy-Jacques-Whoever was bearing down on us,smiling broadly under the mustache that,I noticed, was coming loose at one corner. "Good evening,ladies!" He was a senior, I thought. We didn't have any classes together; he was AP everything,but I thought I remembered seeing him during Performance Night in the spring, part of a co-ed a capella group. They'd done a Black Eyed Peas song-pretty well,too. He was cute, too, in a pale,lanky way. "Walter Elias Disney," he said with a bow. "At your disposal." "Walt Disney?" Sadie was obviously too intrigued to be shy. "Um...?" He grinned and waved his arm at the spectacle behind him with a flourish. "The myriad talents of Johnny Depp aside,it is debatable whether any of this would have come about without me. It seemed only appropriate that I should make an appearance." I nodded. "I'll buy that." He bowed again,but his eyes stayed on Sadie. "Would you care to dance?" "Oh.I....Oh." Several emotions flooded her face in an instant: terror, pleasure, uncertainty, and why-the-hell-not. She darted a glance at me. I gave a quick, emphatic nod. I would be fine. She absolutely should dance. "Sure," she said. And off they went.

No sooner does man discover intelligence than he tries to involve it in his own stupidity. —Jacques-Yves Cousteau

La notizia si sparse per il Calypso dalla sala macchine al ponte, e tutti affollarono la mensa per vedere i reperti. Con gesto rituale Ichac alzò le coppe: «Sono state riunite insieme con i manici genelli ad angolo retto fra loro» disse separandole. «Io sto ora separando oggetti che uno specialista imballò in questo modo 2200 anni fa.» L'osservazione fece colpo sulla compagnia. Le coppe erano state tornite e riunite da esseri viventi i cui abili risultati erano passati dalle loro mani alle nostre attraverso un arco di duemila anni. Noi non intendevamo immergerci semplicemente per andare a pescare dei pezzi da museo, ma per avere notizia di quegli artigiani, per sapere come la loro merce delicata potesse giungere fin nelle acque della Gallia, e sopratutto - per marinai come noi - per avere dati sulla nave e sull'abilità marinara della ciurma. Che specie di nave era quella? Come era stata costruita? Che sorta di uomini l'avevano manovrata? Degli indizi sarebbero potuti uscire dalla fanghiglia sotto di noi per raccontare ogni cosa.

Perché pensiamo all'oceano come a una semplice riserva di cibo, petrolio e minerali? Il mare non è un banco delle occasioni. Siamo accecati dalla cupidigia per le sue grandi ricchezze subacquee. La più grande risorsa dell'oceano non è materiale, ma è data dalla fonte illimitata d'ispirazione e di benessere che ne traiamo. Ma rischiamo di contaminarlo per sempre proprio quando stiamo imparando la sua scienza, la sua arte e la sua filosofia e come vivere nel suo grembo.

Reading was the only subject at which I excelled. I would much rather be reading James Fenimore Cooper than dealing with participles in French. My poor school performance was puzzling because my parents saw that I possessed intelligence and curiosity. Marine biology became a passion. When I asked them to drive me to Boston to hear lectures by Jacques Cousteau, my first hero, they were happy to do so. They took me to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, a paradise for a kid in love with water. I was obsessed with learning from those men who explored the deep. I wanted to go deep. I was told that if I kept up my grades I could come back one summer and intern at Woods Hole. That never happened. My grades were below average. That became the great mystery of my childhood: Why was I having

Examining them now up close, Will decided he didn't care much for trees. Too showy, too unruly, too large - things that had a shape and didn't at the same time. It took only ten minutes for him to realize he mostly distrusted nature: the wasted bits and pieces everywhere, the lewd odors, the imperfect edges, everything unfinished somehow, as though assembled hastily from what was lying around. Also, the ground was damp, and there was nowhere to nap if he got tired. He preferred the nature in books his mother read him at bedtime: the ambulatory forests of Middle Earth, the sapphire bathwater seas of Jacques Cousteau.

I only know that 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.

Les gens protègent ce qu'ils aiment. Ils aiment ce qu'ils comprennent et ils comprennent ce qu'ils apprennent. (People protect what they love. They love what they understand, and they understand what they learn)

If a man for whatever reason has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself. JACQUES-YVES COUSTEAU Legendary underwater explorer and filmmaker

Those masks had a tendency to fog. To prevent this, we learned to rub a raw potato against the glass. We learned this from my father, who had discovered the trick by some chance or other. Unfortunately, we didn’t always have a raw potato at hand when we were at sea, so we figured out that human saliva worked just as well. That’s why, even today, you see divers all over the world, enjoying the most sophisticated equipment, still spitting into their masks before fitting them in place. It’s the best, simplest precaution—and it costs far less than any of the products on the market designed to do the same thing. Plus, it certainly beats a raw potato.

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

There's always hope.

The world is not ready for what is down there.

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever—Jacques Yves Cousteau The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea—Anne Morrow Lindbergh

For almost forty years now, I have lived on the ocean. I have dedicated myself to the sea, and wholly consecrated myself to it. I have explored depths that, until then, were unknown. I have had good days and bad days. I have dived in the waters of incredible transparency, and I have experienced the violence of waves like those at Europa, which tore the Calypso from its anchorage and battered its aging carcass with elemental fury. But, despite all the dangers, all the fatigue, all the sacrifices, I have never regretted the choice I made. The sea, in the final account, always brought me more joy than pain. And that was true in this case also; for I had the pleasure of seeing us all together again - our entire team, gathered under a blue sky, on a blue sea. Once more, the sea had refused to exact a price for our audacity and our curiosity; and once more I was grateful to her for her generosity. -P219

It is possible - indeed, it is likely - that, unless there is a great change in the near future, disaster will follow. And it will be a disaster of which man himself will be not only the perpetrator, but also one of the victims. - p 46

Silner's hut" we called it. There he spent his free time, surrounded by boxes and cans (we use the spar deck to store everything that we have no other space for), doing those mysterious things that all photographers seem to do when left to themselves.

But then we remembered. What did time matter when one was on an endless voyage?... And so we resigned ourselves and cultivated the virtue of patience. Only then did I notice that my back had begun hurting again.

Time and again we have come across phenomena eminently worthy of being investigated - only to have them disappear before we could make eve a visual record... Without being unduly pessimistic, I would say that, for every success we have had in filming or recording a matter of scientific interest, we have had ten failures. - p 46 Life and death in a coral sea

No matter what political party you are with we all should not take politics with us everywhere we go making everything in life politically charged, We all need to take the politics everywhere idea and throw it so far down in the ocean that not even Jacques Cousteau will be able to find it

So this Vauchelles really isn’t far then?’ ‘It’s a fair way, twenty-five minutes I’d say. One of my sisters moved there, thirty years ago. Not seen her since.’ She made it sound like the Bermuda Triangle or a small village on a different continent, rather than actually in the same valley. ‘But why did you not see your sister since then?’ ‘What, go all the way to Vauchelles? I’m not Jacques Cousteau. Only gossipers have time for that, not us workers.

Jacques Cousteau and that in 1960 he told a reporter for Time magazine, “Under water, man becomes an archangel.

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

Hollings had played a major role in creating NOAA—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—when Richard Nixon was president. He loved Jacques Cousteau, and he kept calling me “the new Cousteau.” The fact is, I explored much deeper parts of the ocean than Cousteau—the parts that were less interesting to most people unless they contained an important piece of human history.