Jacques Yves Cousteau Quotes

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

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 future is in the hands of those who explore... and from all the beauty they discover while crossing perpetually receding frontiers, they develop for nature and for humankind an infinite love.

The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.

The best way to observe a fish is to become a fish.

From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.

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

People protect what they love.

The reason I love the sea I cannot explain - it's physical. When you dive you begin to feel like an angel. It's a liberation of your weight.

In the deep space of the sea I have found my moon

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

Man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.

We must go and see for ourselves.

I was playing when I invented the aqualung. I think play is the most serious thing in the world.

The United Nation's goal is to reduce population selectively by encouraging abortion, forced sterilization, and control of human reproduction, and regards two-thirds of the human population as excess baggage, with 350,000 people to be eliminated per day.

We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.

The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed.

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

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.

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

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

Through the window of my mask I see a wall of coral, its surface a living kaleidoscope of lilac flecks, splashes of gold, reddish streaks and yellows, all tinged by the familiar transparent blue of the sea.

I wake up saying, I'm still alive; a miracle. And so I keep on pushing.

No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal.

When we return wild animals to nature, we merely return them to what is already theirs. For man cannot give wild animals freedom, they can only take it away.