Paul Watson Quotes

A fish is more valuable swimming in the sea maintaining the integrity of oceanic eco-systems than it is on anyone's plate.

The tragedy is that there is so much more incentive - money - to destroy the ecology than there is to preserve it.

Be a voice for the future and a voice for the planet.

I was doing a talk show in Vancouver, and somebody called in a bomb threat to protest my violence, which I thought was pretty strange. We had to evacuate.

The biggest predator of fish like cod is other fish - and seals keep fish like that in check.

I don't see the point in making a distinction between natives having more of a right to kill whales than nonnative people.

Earthworms are far more valuable than people.

Russian subs are a bargain at $60,000. Unfortunately, none of the dials or instructions are in English.

Bluefin tuna is sort of like the cheetah of the ocean. It's the fastest fish. It's a warm-blooded fish. But it's got a $100,000 price tag on its head.

Musicians have the power to influence people and along with movie makers, they can reach and influence more people than any group of people, more than scientists and certainly more than politicians.

It's funny but when young people say to me "what can I study to be a force for change, should I study law or biology or business?" My answer is music, drama, journalism, communications.

We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion. We need to eliminate nationalism and tribalism and become Earthlings. And as Earthlings, we need to recognize that all the other species that live on this planet are also fellow citizens and also Earthlings. This is a planet of incredible diversity of life-forms; it is not a planet of one species as many of us believe.

Greenpeace is the world's largest feel-good organisation now, and I can say that 'cause I am one of their co-founders.

All revolutions are violent revolutions.

Everybody is a hypocrite. You can't live on this planet without being a hypocrite.

Ecoterrorism is terrorism against the environment.

People sometimes feel frustrated about what's going on in our oceans and environment, and 'Whale Wars' shows that ordinary people can take action and make things happen.

Sustainable fishing is a fraud. It's a marketing term that really means 'business as usual.'

I will not watch a whale die. I've not seen a whale die since I left Greenpeace in 1977.

Nobody has ever been hurt by the actions of ships I have been on.

We need to stop flying, stop driving cars and jetting around on marine recreational vehicles.

Documentaries make a difference.

An American citizen is not going to be extradited to Japan for saving whales.

The environmental movement doesn't have many deserters and has a high level of recruitment. Eventually, there will be open war.

In December 2012, the U.S. 9th district court granted a temporary injunction to the Japanese whalers that ordered the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society U.S.A. to not approach within 500 yards of the whaling vessels.

The real strength of the environmental movement is the tens of thousands, even millions of individuals around the world who are really making a difference and they are doing it out of passion.

Nobody can legitimately claim to be a marine ecologist and conservationist while continuing to eat fish. It is the ultimate form of hypocrisy.

Unlike aboriginal hunters, commercial seal hunters leave the carcasses on the ice to rot.

I'm never horrible to anybody. My problem, and you can ask any of my friends, is that I'm too nice to everybody.

I experienced the California Northridge Earthquake of 1994 and the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, and I have thus seen firsthand how terrible and awesomely devastating a force of nature can be.

I would just say that nobody could do what I do unless you had a big ego. It's the only way you can really put it. You have to be arrogant enough to challenge the arrogance of the human race.

This isn't a hunt that's going to kill just four or five gray whales. The repercussions of this will have an effect on tens of thousands of whales that will be killed by the Japanese and Norwegians.

I don't eat fish because there is no such thing as sustainable fishing in the world right now.

The war against the Canadian seal hunt is more than a protest. It is a crusade to bring harmony between the natural world and humanity. All of us who oppose it are dedicated to the protection of life and the abolition of cruelty.

Commercial fishermen are the greediest, stupidest people on earth.

That's the thing with celebrities: the media can't ignore them.

I take a biocentric point of view. I look at things from the point of view of the Earth and the laws of ecology. As opposed to the anthropocentric point of view, where everything revolves around humanity.

As long as there is a Southern Ocean whale sanctuary, Sea Shepherd crew will continue to patrol and defend it.

Nazi propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels once remarked that if a lie is told often enough people will begin to see the lie as truth.

Greenpeace has a fast ship that could stop the whalers cold.

You can't love nature with a gun

NATO isn't going to be concerned about fishing.

Follow your dreams and use your natural-born talents and skills to make this a better world for tomorrow.

We should not be living in human communities that enclose tiny preserved ecosystems within them. Human communities should be maintained in small population enclaves within linked wilderness ecosystems. No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas. Communication systems can link the communities.

I reject the idea that humans are superior to other life forms ... Man is just an ape with an overly developed sense of superiority.

Japan is a bully nation that takes what it wants and threatens any who oppose it.

The fact is I have never been convicted of a crime.

The shark is the apex predator in the sea. Sharks have molded evolution for 450 million years. All fish species that are prey to the sharks have had their behavior, their speed, their camouflage, their defense mechanisms molded by the shark.

I did not establish the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as a protest organisation.

The oceans are the last free place on the planet.

We need to stop burning fossil fuels and utilize only wind, water, and solar power with all generation of power coming from individual or small community units like windmills, waterwheels, and solar panels. Sea transportation should be by sail ... Air transportation should be by solar powered blimps when air transportation is necessary.

North American cats eat more fish than all the world's seals put together, yet we lay the blame on the seals for the declining fish stocks.

My position is this. If we can't protect sanctuaries, if we can't save the whales, the sharks, the fish, our oceans will die.

I can't think of a greater legacy than, "Because you lived, another species survived."

I do what I do because it is the right thing to do. I am a warrior, and it is the way of the warrior to fight superior odds.

I wouldn't think I was successful if I didn't have just as many people hate me as support me.

I have an unexplainable belief that I will never cause harm or be harmed while at sea. Because of this, I feel secure at sea: I feel secure in the ice, I feel secure in the storms, and I feel secure in confrontations.

Protesting against illegal activity is not piracy.

We should never feel like we're going too far in breaking the law, because whatever laws you break to liberate animals or to protect the environment are very insignificant compared to the laws that are broken by that parliament of whores in Washington. They are the biggest lawbreakers, the biggest destroyers, the biggest mass-murderers on this planet right now.

Killing a baby seal is about the easiest thing you can do if you're inclined to be sadistic; you certainly can't say there's any sport in it - the animal is totally defenceless.

Unless we stop the degradation of our oceans, marine ecological systems will begin collapsing and when enough of them fail, the oceans will die. And if the oceans die, then civilization collapses and we all die

I have actually led more expeditions to Antarctica than Scott, Amundsen, and Shackleton put together.

If you want to know where you would have stood on slavery before the Civil War, don't look at where you stand on slavery today. Look at where you stand on animal rights.

I've won some awards. 'Time' magazine designated me as one of the environmental heroes of the 20th century. Oh, and I've got some honorary citizenships, like from the Conch Republic of the Florida Keys. But the one thing I am proud of is I didn't get the Chevron environmental award. Never did get that one.

I don't have a religion, but I respect them.

If you don't know an answer, a fact, a statistic - make it up on the spot.

The fact is, Japan's whaling is illegal, so just because there is a natural disaster in Japan is no reason for us to stop opposing their illegal activities in the Southern Ocean.

My clients are the whales and the seals.

Putting Zodiacs in front of whaling vessels doesn't do it anymore. Done that, been there, seen that.

I'm not pessimistic about anything.

Pigs eat more tuna than all the planet's sharks combined.

Seafood is simply a socially acceptable form of bush meat. We condemn Africans for hunting monkeys and mammalian and bird species from the jungle yet the developed world thinks nothing of hauling in magnificent wild creatures like swordfish, tuna, halibut, shark, and salmon for our meals. The fact is that the global slaughter of marine wildlife is simply the largest massacre of wildlife on the planet.

The sealing industry is dying.

Captain Falco saw the diminishment of biodiversity in our oceans over a span of nearly seven decades. He was dedicated to the protection of life and habitats in the sea. He was a legendary mariner, diver, oceanographer, and conservationist. The world is a better place because of him.

Canada I don't trust. The Canadian government hates me more than the Japanese.

Intelligence is the ability of a species to live in harmony with its environment.

My grandfather carried me around on his shoulders at 85.

Costa Rica and Germany have simply been pawns in the Japanese quest to silence Sea Shepherd in an attempt to stop our annual opposition of their illegal whaling activities.

When I was born, there were three billion people on the planet.

If we wipe out the fish, the oceans are going to die. If the oceans die, we die. We can't live on this planet with a dead ocean.

I have been honored to serve the whales, dolphins, seals - and all the other creatures on this Earth. Their beauty, intelligence, strength, and spirit have inspired me. These beings have spoken to me, touched me, and I have been rewarded by friendship with many members of different species. If the whales survive and flourish, if the seals continue to live and give birth, and if I can contribute to ensuring their future prosperity, I will be forever happy.

In 'Deadliest Catch,' we have men in ships in rough seas catching crabs. With 'Whale Wars,' we have men and women from a dozen different nations going out to sea in rough weather to help save the whales. We also have icebergs, whales, penguins, and dramatic ship-to-ship confrontations.

You don't get anywhere unless you've had a little bit of a complicated life.

Does Greenpeace think it can stop whaling in Antarctica by publicly eating whale meat and declaring it delicious? What are these people thinking?

There is no sustainable future for fisheries as long as human populations continue to increase.

They [Greenpeace] forgot their original purpose and turned into a big, rich bureaucracy, more interested in fund-raising than in saving lives, so I got fed up and quit ... they're a bunch of wimps.

Any social movement throughout history has always been carried out by only 7% of population being passionately active in that.

Immigration is one of the leading contributors to population growth.

People feel good about giving money to Greenpeace.

The seal hunt has made me ashamed to be a Canadian.

The only language that the Japanese whaling industry understands is economics.

They [Japanese whalers] haven't produced a single peer-reviewed international scientific paper in 23 years.

To slaughter grand and beautiful creatures like these tuskers, whether terrestrial or marine, solely to obtain a few teeth indicates that we have not evolved very much since the days our forebears lived in caves and saught to prove their superiority by adorning themselves with teeth and claws

I'm not interested in culture; I'm interested in the law.

I don't think that any government has a right to subvert the truth or to cover up the truth, and all I see WikiLeaks doing is exposing the truth.

I don't think you really have to retire from what you do.

There's nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write history.

I'm thankful to have time to write.

No species is more important than others.

There are many who condemn my crew and I for taking the law into our own hands and for taking on the barons of corporate profit.