Barry Commoner

My entry into the environmental arena was through the issue that so dramatically — and destructively — demonstrates the link between science and social action: nuclear weapons.

Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented.

By adopting the control strategy, the nation's environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.

If you ask what you are going to do about global warming, the only rational answer is to change the way in which we do transportation, energy production, agriculture and a good deal of manufacturing. The problem originates in human activity in the form of the production of goods.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

The most meaningful engine of change, powerful enough to confront corporate power, may be not so much environmental quality, as the economic development and growth associated with the effort to improve it.

If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are looking the wrong way.

World War II had a very important impact on the development of technology, as a whole.

I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It's irrational.