Top 100 Cousteau Quotes
#1. The earliest memories I have of the ocean are actually stories - stories from my grandfather, the legendary ocean explorer and conservationist Jacques Cousteau. My passion for ocean conservation stems from learning at a very young age that we're all connected; we're all in this together.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#2. When I was a kid, Jacques Cousteau was my hero and the person who inspired me to become an underwater explorer. I have many other people who inspired me after him, but he is still my all-time hero.
Enric Sala
#3. As a boy I dreamed that I could go on a boat with Jean Cousteau. But I was never given the opportunity. I am now giving that opportunity to young people around the world who would like to experience the beauty of nature.
Mike Horn
#4. I think Captain Cousteau might be the father of the environmental movement.
Ted Turner
#5. Successful technologies often begin as hobbies. Jacques Cousteau invented scuba diving because he enjoyed exploring caves. The Wright brothers invented flying as a relief from the monotony of their normal business of selling and repairing bicycles.
Freeman Dyson
#6. He's not lying. I can assure you, he's part fish. Jacques Cousteau has nothing on him. Aquaman, either. (Solin)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#7. Like my father and grandfather, Philippe and Jacques-Yves Cousteau, I've dedicated my life to exploring and protecting our seas, in large part through documentary film.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#8. Here I go, deep type flow,
Jacques Cousteau could never get this low.
Ol' Dirty Bastard
#9. Jacques Cousteau, the last man to see Jimmy Hoffa. Never got a dinner!
Red Buttons
#10. The Jacques Cousteau shows actually got me very excited about the fact that there's an alien world here on Earth.
James Cameron
#11. See, I've always seen Jacques Cousteau as a hero, mate. He's a legend - like my dad, just a legend. And so what he did for conservation in the '60s through the '70s was just phenomenal.
Steve Irwin
#14. Mission 31 pays homage to my grandfather's work and all aquanauts who have since followed his lead in the name of ocean exploration.
Fabien Cousteau
#17. Since oceans are the life support system of our planet, regulating the climate, providing most of our oxygen and feeding over a billion people, what's bad for oceans is bad for us - very bad.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#18. It's terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn't even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#19. I was playing when I invented the aqualung. I think play is the most serious thing in the world.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#20. Young people have, truly, the potential to change the world. Not when they get older - today.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#21. With earth's burgeoning human population to feed we must turn to the sea with understanding and new technology. We need to farm it as we farm the land.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#22. The first time I ever had the opportunity to dive on the Great Barrier Reef, it was while filming 'Oceans Deadliest' with Steve Irwin. I remember just how awestruck I was by its beauty.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#23. And let us remember too that life, in its exuberance, always succeeds in overflowing the narrow limits within which man thinks he can confine it.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#24. What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#26. There was wildlife, untouched, a jungle at the border of the sea, never seen by those who floated on the opaque roof. Describing his early experience, in 1936, when a fellow naval officer, Philippe Tailliez, gave him goggles to see below the Mediterranean Sea surface.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#27. EarthEcho Expeditions represents the culmination of more than a decade of working with educators and youth from around the world. EarthEcho Expeditions uses the thrill of adventure to inspire and empower a new generation of environmental champions.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#33. No matter how remote we feel we are from the oceans, every act each one of us takes in our everyday lives affects our planet's water cycle and in return affects us.
Fabien Cousteau
#34. I love snowboarding. It's probably my favorite sport. I love sitting on top of the mountain and the snow falling and that silence, that snow silence. That's, like, a very peaceful, happy place for me.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#35. It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#36. They say that our sense of smell is one of the strongest triggers of memories. Of course, our sense of smell is integral to our sense of taste, so it is no surprise, then, that in a life full of moving and traveling, food has always been a source of familiar comfort for me.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#38. Without ethics, everything happens as if we were all five billion passengers on a big machinery and nobody is driving the machinery. And it's going faster and faster, but we don't know where.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#41. As our technology evolves, we will have the capacity to reach new, ever-increasing depths. The question is what kind of technology, in the end, do we want to deploy in the far reaches of the ocean? Tools of science, ecology and documentation, or the destructive tools of heavy industry?
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#42. The Arctic is among the least understood places on the planet; however, we do know that its landscape is changing and evolving as quickly as cell phones and the Internet.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#44. Helping people understand the impact of key environmental and human issues worldwide is something that I'm passionate about. CNN's 'Going Green' series of specials are engaging viewers around the world through important messages of conservation and hope.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#46. 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
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#47. 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.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#48. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#49. The world cannot live without the Arctic; it affects every living thing on Earth and acts as a virtual thermostat, reflecting sunlight and cooling the planet.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#50. The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers. Our survival is no more than a question of 25, 50 or perhaps 100 years.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#51. The awareness of our environment came progressively in all countries with different outlets.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#53. We are all connected to the ocean. Without healthy oceans, no life, not even on land, can exist.
Jean-Michel Cousteau
#54. The great news is that overwhelmingly far more than adults, youth already care about the environment. Young people are recognizing that we have largely made a mess of things with respect to the environment [and] that the burden to fix it will fall on them.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#56. If a product has an endless list of ingredients, and you can't pronounce half of them, I would think twice about bringing them into your home.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#57. When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#58. I've seen a lot of doom and gloom and depressing things, and it's [the] youth that give me hope.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#59. However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#60. There is about as much educational benefit to be gained in studying dolphins in captivity as there would be studying mankind by only observing prisoners held in solitary confinement
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#61. Truly, we do live on a 'water planet.' For us, water is that critical issue that we need. It's the most precious substance on the planet, and it links us to pretty much every environmental issue, including climate change, that we're facing.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#62. I travel all over the country speaking to young people, and I am always amazed at how engaged in environmental conservation they are.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#63. 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.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#64. Despite their lack of visual impact, headline sex-appeal, and their 'out of sight, out of mind' nature, we should all care about aquatic dead zones because we are all connected to their causes and we all feel their impacts.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#67. My greatest hope for a future without another Deepwater Horizon disaster lies in our schools, living rooms and community centers, not in boardrooms, political chambers and big industry. If this happens again, we won't have the luxury of the unknown to shield us from answering 'Why?'
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#69. One of my big pet peeves is single-use plastic bags. I think it's one of the stupidest ideas in the world.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#70. 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.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#71. Water is our most precious and interconnected natural resource. It sustains all ecosystems, communities, and economies from local watersheds to the seas. It's vital to sustaining our health, safety, and the environments in which we live and work. Simply put, water is life.
Alexandra Cousteau
#72. If human civilization is going to invade the waters of the earth, then let it be first of all to carry a message of respect.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#73. We need a new global culture that finds the existence of millions of thirsty people thoroughly and immediately unacceptable.
Jean-Michel Cousteau
#74. I went to elementary school in L.A. I was born in L.A. My mother was from Redondo Beach. My father was French. He died six months before I was born, so my mother went home. I was born there. Not the childhood that most people think. Middle-class, raised by my mother. Single mom.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#75. Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#76. I believe that the only true agents of change on a large scale, in this country or anywhere, are young people.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#77. The real cure for our environmental problems is to understand that our job is to salvage Mother Nature. We are facing a formidable enemy in this field. It is the hunters ... and to convince them to leave their guns on the wall is going to be very difficult.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#78. In many ways, our homes act as one big drain that, through our daily relationship with water, carries many toxic substances into our waterways and the environment.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#80. Clean water, the essence of life and a birthright for everyone, must become available to all people now.
Jean-Michel Cousteau
#81. Ocean acidification is often referred to as osteoporosis of the oceans because as acidity rises, shell building creatures such as lobster, oyster, crab, shrimp, and coral are unable to extract the calcium carbonate from the water that they need to build their shells and are thus unable to survive.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#83. 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.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#84. Targeting women is key in developing countries. It allows them to go to school, to say how many children they're going to have, which drives the issue of population and how their children will be educated. Women are the best investments in developing countries.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#85. 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.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#86. 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.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#88. Mankind has probably done more damage to the Earth in the 20th century than in all of previous human history.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#89. Man, of all the animals, is probably the only one to regard himself as a great delicacy.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#90. We've explored very little of the ocean. We really don't know what's out there. But people think we've figured it all out.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#91. The biggest obstacle was mixing abortion with overpopulation. These are two things that have nothing to do with each other.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#92. Perhaps the time has come to formulate a moral code which would govern our relations with the great creatures of the sea as well as with those on dry land. That this will come to pass is my dear wish.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#93. I'll never be able to fill my father's or grandfather's shoes, but hopefully I can stand on their shoulders and reach farther.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#94. For those who don't live in a place where water is readily available, it's something you carry on your back for six kilometers, that makes your children sick, that is perhaps the hardest part of your existence.
Alexandra Cousteau
#95. Sumatra has these lush forests and huge, amazing creatures like elephants, orangutans, and tigers. They're disappearing because of industry coming in and cutting down the forests.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
#96. There's about as much educational benefit studying dolphins in captivity as there would be studying mankind by only observing prisoners held in solitary.
Jacques Cousteau
#97. 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.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#98. In order to save the planet it would be necessary to kill 350,000 people per day.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#99. The fact of the matter is our homes are on the frontlines when it comes to protecting and conserving our critical water resources - more than that, they are also key to protecting our health.
Philippe Cousteau Jr.
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