Peter Benchley
10 quotes
Biography
"I hope that 'Jaws' will have brought sharks into the public interest at a time when we desperately need to reevaluate our care for the environment."
"It is not that I don't have a fear of sharks, it is that I have a respect for them, so that I know any more than if I were to go into the jungle, I would have a fear of tigers, that I would try to lower the odds."
"In a deeply tribal sense, we love our monsters, and I think that is the key to it right there. It is monsters; it is learning about them: it is both thrill and safety. You can think of them without being desperately afraid because they are not going to come into your living room and eat you. That is 'Jaws.'"
"Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain."
"We are already perilously close to killing off the top of the oceanic food chain - with catastrophic consequences that we can't begin to imagine. Let us not, in the heat of anger, reduce the already devastated population of great white sharks by one more member."
"We provoke a shark every time we enter the water where sharks happen to be, for we forget: The ocean is not our territory - it's theirs."
"If we choose to walk into a forest where a tiger lives, we are taking a chance. If we swim in a river where crocodiles live, we are taking a chance. If we visit the desert or climb a mountain or enter a swamp where snakes have managed to survive, we are taking a chance."
"We do not just fear our predators, we are transfixed by them. We are prone to weave stories and fables and chat endlessly about them."
"Without the oceans there would be no life on Earth."
"If man doesn't learn to treat the oceans and the rain forest with respect, man will become extinct."