Daniel Quinn Quotes

If the world is saved, it will not be saved by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all.

Indigenous people believe that Man belongs to the World; civilized people believe that the World belongs to Man.

If you can’t discover what’s keeping you in, the will to get out soon becomes confused and ineffectual - "Ishmael

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

The world of the Takers is one vast prison, and except for a handful of Leavers scattered across the world, the entire human race is now inside that prison.

Don't try to drive the homeless into places we find suitable. Help them survive in places they find suitable.

There is no one right way to live.

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

Don't wait. Where do you expect to get by waiting? Doing is what teaches you. Doing is what leads to inspiration. Doing is what generates ideas. Nothing else, and nothing less.

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.

The world must live. We are only one species among billions. The gods don't love us any more than they love spiders or bears or whales or water lilies.

TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.

Increasing food production to feed an increased population results in yet another increase in population.

From infancy onward, children are the most fantastic learners in the world.

You know how to split atoms, how to send explorers to the moon, how to splice genes, but you don't know how people ought to live.

And in spite of all the mastery we've attained, we don't have enough mastery to stop devastating the world, or to repair the devastation we've already wrought.

Blessed are those who do whatever they can wherever they are, for no one is devoid of resources or opportunities.

We're not destroying the world because we're clumsy. We're destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it.

What is crucial to your survival as a race is not the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the destruction of the prison itself.

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

Many of the biggest and most far-reaching investments we make in our lives are investments that have little or nothing to do with money.

five severed fingers do not make a hand

All paths lie together in the hand of god like a web endlessly woven, and yours and mine are no greater or less than the beetle's or the squirrel's or the sparrow's. All are held together.

I have amazing news for you. Man is not alone on this planet. He is part of a community, upon which he depends absolutely.

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

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

Children don't need learning. They need access to what they want to learn outside the home.

Pity is always twinged with disgust.

We are all captives of a story.

Our lifestyle is evolutionarily unstable--and is therefore in the process of eliminating itself in the perfectly ordinary way.

There are indeed times when one should TRUST blindly, just as there are times when one should not. WISDOM consists in being able to tell one from the other.

But why? Why do you need prophets to tell you how you ought to live? Why do you need anyone to tell you how you ought to live

Yes,I'm afraid you're right. Trial and error isn't a bad way to learn how to build an aircraft,but it can be a disastrous way to learn how to build a civilization.

Animists are not so much people with a religion as people with a fundamentally religious way of looking at things.

There are times when having too much to say can be as dumbfounding as having too little.

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.

Courage is the virtue of the free.

No story is devoid of meaning ... If you know how to look for it.

Imagine that the gods have a care for everything that lives in the community of life on earth.

We're straying from the path of salvation because we remember that we once belonged to the world and were content in that belonging.

The sign stopped me-- or rather, this text stopped me. Words are my profession; I seized these and demanded that they explain themselves, that they cease to be ambiguous.

In fact, of course, there is no secret knowledge; no one knows anything that can't be found on a shelf in the public library.

May the forests be with you and with your children.

What's normal is for things to work. What's not normal is for things to fail.

Wow, just imagine missing school on the day when they were learning blue. You'd spend the rest of your life wondering what color the sky is.

We need schools to force kids to learn things they have no use for.

The world is not in any sense in danger from itself. The world is in fact not in any danger at all. It is we who are in danger.

Lies are like sleeping pills. You should only use them when you absolutely have to. They spoil everything if you make a habit of them.