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Until four years ago, in fact, I was absolutely in love with the atom.

Understanding how DNA transmits all it knows about cancer, physics, dreaming and love will keep man searching for some time.

They simply don't know that much about what they're doing. There isn't enough control. There isn't enough capability in ordinary people to tinker with such a complicated piece of machinery.

David R. Brower

People

Control

When people say, 'You're not being realistic,' they're just trying to tag some thoughts that they can't otherwise handle.

I was actually telling people that - by harnessing the atom - we could enter a new era of unlimited power that would do away with the need to dam our beautiful streams.

David R. Brower

Power

People

It's like turning the space program over to the Long Island Railroad.

David R. Brower

Space

It's very hard for me to know what to say about fusion right now, inasmuch as it is not yet scientifically feasible. I just can't understand how so many people are able to predict so much about something that still isn't scientifically possible.

Once we open the door to the plutonium economy, we expose ourselves to absolutely terrible, horrifying risks from these people.

Perhaps most ridiculous of all is the suggestion that we 'keep' our radioactive garbage for the use of our descendants. This 'solution', I think, requires an immediate poll of the next 20,000 generations.

David R. Brower

Generations

Even if you build the perfect reactor, you're still saddled with a people problem and an equipment problem.

David R. Brower

People

For how many people do you think might yet stand on this planet before the sun grows cold? That's the responsibility we hold in our hands.

I began working with the John Muir Institute and then started helping found Friends of the Earth organizations here and there in other countries. That pretty well brings us up to the present.

I believe that the average guy in the street will give up a great deal, if he really understands the cost of not giving it up. In fact, we may find that, while we're drastically cutting our energy consumption, we're actually raising our standard of living.

Perhaps we'll realize that each of us has not one vote but ten thousand or a million.

David R. Brower

Vote

I sort of kept my hand in writing and went to work for the Sierra Club in '52, walked the plank there in '69, founded Friends of the Earth and the League of Conservation Voters after that.