Daniel Quinn, Ishmael Quotes

The premise of the Taker story is 'the world belongs to man'. … The premise of the Leaver story is 'man belongs to the world'.

[A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.

No one species shall make the life of the world its own.' … That's one expression of the law. Here's another: 'The world was not made for any one species.

You shouldn't have to settle for rabbits if what you want is deer

The obvious can sometimes be illuminating when perceived in an unhabitual way.

If the world was made for us, then it BELONGS to us and we can do what we damn well please with it.

The journey itself is going to change you, so you don’t have to worry about memorizing the route we took to accomplish that change.

And every time the Takers stamp out a Leaver culture, a wisdom ultimately tested since the birth of mankind disappears from the world beyond recall.

[N]ow we have a clearer idea what this story is all about: The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it.

This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world's divinely appointed ruler: 'I will not LET them starve. I will not LET the drought come. I will not LET the river flood.

With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man?

The world is not going to survive very much longer as humanity’s captive.

We had been taken from The Wild and brought together in one place, because, for some strange reason, people found us interesting.

I went out and had a drink. I needed to talk to someone, and solitary drinkers are lucky in this regard— they always have someone to talk to.