Paul Watson

“All confrontation is based on deception.”

“Nobody can legitimately claim to be a marine ecologist and conservationist while continuing to eat fish. It is the ultimate form of hypocrisy.”

“I don't think that any government has a right to subvert the truth or to cover up the truth, and all I see WikiLeaks doing is exposing the truth.”

“I always say, 'I'm not a pirate, I just play one on TV.'”

“We buy a bottle of water in the city, where clean water comes out in its taps. You know, back in 1965, if someone said to the average person, 'You know in thirty years you are going to buy water in plastic bottles and pay more for that water than for gasoline?' Everybody would look at you like you're completely out of your mind.”

“I have actually led more expeditions to Antarctica than Scott, Amundsen, and Shackleton put together.”

“When I was born, there were three billion people on the planet.”

“Greenpeace has a fast ship that could stop the whalers cold.”

“The film 'The Cove' made people aware of the Japanese slaughter of whales.”

“I'm never horrible to anybody. My problem, and you can ask any of my friends, is that I'm too nice to everybody.”

“In Ecuador, if I go after an Ecuadoran, I'm in trouble; if I go after a Costa Rican, I'm a hero.”

“Sea Shepherd does not condone, nor do we practise, violence.”

“Social change comes through people.”

“There's money to be made by driving a species extinct.”

“I take a biocentric point of view. I look at things from the point of view of the Earth and the laws of ecology. As opposed to the anthropocentric point of view, where everything revolves around humanity.”

“An American citizen is not going to be extradited to Japan for saving whales.”

“Killing a baby seal is about the easiest thing you can do if you're inclined to be sadistic; you certainly can't say there's any sport in it - the animal is totally defenceless.”

“The Sea Shepherd crew is doing what governments should be doing, but refuse to do themselves, because of the threats of trade retaliation from Japan.”

“I was doing a talk show in Vancouver, and somebody called in a bomb threat to protest my violence, which I thought was pretty strange. We had to evacuate.”

“The United Nations World Charter for Nature, section 21, empowers any nongovernmental organisation or individual to uphold international conservation law in areas beyond national jurisdiction and specifically on the high seas.”