“Yours is a grave and sobering responsibility, but it is also a shining opportunity. You go out into a world where mankind is challenged, as it has never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and its mastery — not of nature, but of itself. Therein lies our hope and our destiny.”

Rachel Carson died on this day in 1964, having effected nothing less than the awakening of the environmental conscience. The only commencement address she ever gave crystallizes her moral philosophy and her words of wisdom to posterity – that is, to us: