We live in a web of ideas, a fabric of our own making. – Joseph Chilton Pearce

It is the safest of times, it is the riskiest of times…. What the Dickens is going on here? – Denton Morrison, on chemicals, technology, and risk, quoted in National Academy

One of the first laws against air pollution came in 1300 when King Edward I decreed the death penalty for burning of coal. At least one execution for that offense is recorded. But economics triumphed over health considerations, and air pollution became an appalling problem in England. – Glenn T. Seaborg, Atomic Energy Commission chairman, speech, Argonne National La

In the sixties, you could always insult a guy by calling him “plastic.” It meant he was phony or superficial. The opposite of plastic was “real.” – Elizabeth Royte, Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, 2005