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Daniel Quinn Quotes: 15

  • It's the idea that people living close to nature tend to be noble. It's seeing all those sunsets that does it. You can't watch a sunset and then go off and set fire to your neighbor's tepee. Living close to nature is wonderful for your mental health.

    Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

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

    Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

  • You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live. … You are captives—and you have made a captive of the world itself. That's what's at stake, isn't it?—your captivity and the captivity of the world.

    Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

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

    Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

  • If you alone found out what the lie was, then you're probably right—it would make no great difference. But if you ALL found out what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference indeed.

    Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

  • The mythology of your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one pays the slightest bit of attention to it. Of course man is conquering space and the atom and the deserts and the oceans and the elements. According to your mythology, this is what he was BORN to do.

    Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

  • 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.

    Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

  • [T]he price you've paid is not the price of becoming human. It's not even the price of having the things you just mentioned. It's the price of enacting a story that casts mankind as the enemy of the world.

    Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

  • This law … defines the limits of competition in the community of life. You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war.

    Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

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

    Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

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

    Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

  • [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.

    Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

  • If you go to Singapore or Amsterdam or Seoul or Buenos Aires or Islamabad or Johannesburg or Tampa or Istanbul or Kyoto, you'll find that the people differ wildly in the way they dress, in their marriage customs, in the holidays they observe, in their religious rituals, and so on, but they all expect the food to be under lock and key. It's all owned, and if you want some, you'll have to buy it.

  • Putting food under lock and key was one of the great innovations of your culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key - and putting it there is the cornerstone of your economy.[...] Because if the food wasn't under lock and key, Julie, who would work?

  • 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.

    Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit