Pesticides 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

  Agriculture, Machines, Fuel

  77 Copy quote

• The final principle of natural farming is NO PESTICIDES. Nature is in perfect balance when left alone.

  Masanobu Fukuoka

  Perfect, Balance, Principles

  29 Copy quote

• Swallows have disappeared, bees are dying out because of pesticides that should have been banned long ago - it's a scandal.

  Brigitte Bardot

  Long Ago, Should Have, Dying

  27 Copy quote

• What, then, is the effect of pesticides? Pesticides have created a legacy of pain, and misery, and death for farm workers and consumers alike. The crop which poses the greatest danger, and the focus of our struggle, is the table grape crop. These pesticides soak the fields. Drift with the wind, pollute the water, and are eaten by unwitting consumers. These poisons are designed to kill, and pose a very real threat to consumers and farm workers alike.

  Cesar Chavez

  Pain, Real, Struggle

  Cesar Chavez (2008). “An Organizer's Tale: Speeches”, p.264, Penguin

  11 Copy quote

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• Starbucks goes to a great effort, and pays twice as much for its coffee as its competitors do, and is very careful to help coffee producers in developing countries grow coffee without pesticides and in ways that preserve forest structure.

  Jared Diamond

  Country, Coffee, Effort

  23 Copy quote

• We can break the mountains apart; we can drain the rivers and flood the valleys. We can turn the most luxuriant forests into throw-away paper products. We can tear apart the great grass cover of the western plains and pour toxic chemicals into the soil and pesticides onto the fields until the soil is dead and blows away in the wind. We can pollute the air with acids, the rivers with sewage, the seas with oil - all this in a kind of intoxication with our power for devastation at an order of magnitude beyond all reckoning.

  Thomas Berry

  Blow, Oil, Rivers

  73 Copy quote

• A Who's Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones - we had better know something about their nature and their power.

  Rachel Carson

  Drinking, Bones, Eating

  Rachel Carson (2002). “Silent Spring”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  38 Copy quote

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• When the farmer can sell directly to the consumer, it is a more active process. There's more contact. The consumer can know, who am I buying this from? What's their name? Do they have a face? Is the food they are selling coming out of Mexico with pesticides?

  Jerry Brown

  Names, Buying, Faces

  20 Copy quote

• My understanding has always been that if there is any indication that pesticides are harmful, that they would not be allowed to be used.

  George Deukmejian

  Understanding, Used, Ifs

  12 Copy quote

• Organic agriculture is more about fairness and respect than it is about parts-per-billion of pesticide residues

  Jim Hightower

  Nature, Agriculture, Fairness

  8 Copy quote

• I don't prefer to fill my body with antibiotics, pesticides, steroids, and growth hormones - my body is my temple, and I treat it as such.

  Suzanne Whang

  Growth Hormones, Temples, Body

  8 Copy quote

• One animal or plant species may become extinct every hour. All species are doomed to extinction, but man through worldwide development/killing animals for food/profit/using toxic chemicals such as pesticides/industrial wastes, will accelerate the extinction of plants/animals and the result will be a more hostile environment for man.

  Erik P. Eckholm

  Men, Animal, Toxic

  14 Copy quote

• The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became. I realized that here was the material for a book. What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important.

  Rachel Carson

  Book, Important, Would Be

  Paul Brooks, Rachel Carson (1972). “The house of life: Rachel Carson at work”

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• Most of the plants grown to be fed to farm animals are heavily saturated with pesticides and herbicides and have been genetically modified, all of which contributes to the pollution and destruction of our environment, which harms us all.

  Sharon Gannon

  Animal, Environment, Plant

  "Sharon Gannon on Veganism". jivamuktiyoga.com. November 16, 2016.

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• In general, I try to eat food without added hormones and pesticides, but I'm not so strict that I won't have a Big Mac once in a while.

  Missy Peregrym

  Trying, Bigs, Hormones

  12 Copy quote

• Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Food, Animal, Vegetarianism

  77 Copy quote

• The moment we turn over the soil we start poisoning it and we go on poisoning it all the way through... and there's probably not a river in the United States that doesn't have pesticide poisoning in it. The fish are dying. The seas are getting polluted. All of these things are happening. The rain forests are going. That's what the context is.

  W. S. Merwin

  Rain, Sea, Rivers

  "An Interview with W. S. Merwin, Poet Laureate". Interview with Ed Rampell, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. October 25, 2010.

  8 Copy quote

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• I always knew pesticides affected farmworkers. That's why I always tell people, "eat organic." Not just because it's better for you but because you know the people who picked your food weren't in a toxic environment.

  Eva Longoria

  People, Toxic, Environment

  "More Than a Desperate Housewife, Eva Longoria Talks Activism". Interview with Avital Andrews, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 6, 2017.

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• Globalization, which attempts to amalgamate every local, regional, and national economy into a single world system, requires homogenizing locally adapted forms of agriculture, replacing them with an industrial system-centrally managed, pesticide-intensive, one-crop production for export-designed to deliver a narrow range of transportable foods to the world market.

  Helena Norberg-Hodge

  Agriculture, World, Globalization

  47 Copy quote

• One thing is all things. To resolve one matter, one must resolve all matters. Changing one thing changes all things. Once I made the decision to sow rice in the fall, I found that I could also stop transplanting, and plowing, and applying chemical fertilizers, and preparing compost, and spraying pesticides.

  Masanobu Fukuoka

  Fall, Decision, Plowing

  Masanobu Fukuoka (1987). “The Natural Way of Farming: The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy”, Japan Publications (USA)

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• The effort to eliminate synthetic pesticides because of unsubstantiated fears about residues in food will make fruits and vegetables more expensive, decrease consumption, and thus increase cancer rates. The levels of synthetic pesticide residues are trivial in comparison to natural chemicals, and thus their potential for cancer causation is extremely low. [Ames believes that "to eat your veggies" is the best way to prevent cancer.]

  Bruce Ames

  Cancer, Believe, Science

  6 Copy quote

• The standard approach has been to pump up the dosage of chemicals ... Twenty percent of these approved-for-use pesticides are listed by the EPA as carcinogenic in humans.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Animal, Vegetables, Miracle

  Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.165, Faber & Faber

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• If we weren't so dirt-conscious, we would obtain adequate vitamin B12 from soil, air, water, and bacteria, but we meticulously wash and peel our vegetables now - and with good reason, as we can't be sure our soil is not contaminated with pesticides and herbicides.

  Sharon Gannon

  Air, Vegetables, Water

  "Sharon Gannon on Veganism". jivamuktiyoga.com. November 16, 2016.

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• First law: The pesticide paradox. Every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffective.

  Boris Beizer

  Law, Use, Bugs

  8 Copy quote

• A good laugh is the best pesticide.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Laughing, Good Laugh

  1968 Interview on BBC television. Reported in The Listener, 10 Oct.

  6 Copy quote

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