Paul Watson Quotes

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.

In the great scheme of things, what matters is not how long you live but why you live, what you stand for and what you are willing to die for.

It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.

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

WE CAN NOT LIVE ON THIS PLANET WITH DEAD OCEANS. IF OUR OCEANS DIE, WE DIE.

A vegan riding a hummer contributes less to greenhouse gas emissions than a meat eater riding a bicycle.

What we need now is heroes - millions of them. Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

Almost all theological thought is anthropocentric and I just cannot buy into the anthropocentric ideology. Basically we're a bunch of conceited apes.

It is true that many of the Sea Shepherd crewmembers are inexperienced, but the fact is that these volunteers bring a passion to the project that cannot be found in a hired crew.

That fact is that we live in an extremely violent culture, and we all justify violence if it's for what we believe in .

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

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

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

We don't give a damn what you or anybody else on this planet thinks. We didn't sink those ships for you. We did it for the whales.

We are literally eating the oceans alive and there are simply not enough fish to continue to feed an ever expanding population of humanity.

I can assure you no whales are going to be killed today.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

We live in a media culture and whoever controls and influences and uses media the best has the power for change.

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.

I have hope that humanity will be cured of our collective ecological insanity and that we adapt to living within the boundaries of the laws of ecology.

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

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

Immigration is one of the leading contributors to population growth.

Social change comes through people.

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

Once we get three more directors elected, the Sierra Club will no longer be pro-hunting and pro-trapping and we can use the resources of the $95-million-a-year budget to address some of these issues.

You can't love nature with a gun

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.

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.

Atlantic puffins starve to death so that Danish chickens can feast on their fish.

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

You cannot commit an act of violence against a non-sentient object, only against a living thing.

All of the great whales are endangered.

Earthworms are far more valuable than people.

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.

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

We have intelligent species on our planet that we are not even trying to communicate with.

I’ve got no criminal record.

I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should go out and shoot the kids who shoot birds.

We go after unlawful activities.

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

Musicians have made incredible contributions to the conservation and environmental movement and continue to do so, more than ever.

It doesn't matter what is true; it only matters what people believe is true... You are what the media define you to be. [Greenpeace] became a myth and a myth-generating machine.

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

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

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.