Daniel Quinn Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
More Daniel Quinn quote about:
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“But we're not humanity, we're just one culture - one culture out of hundreds of thousands that have lived their vision on this planet and sung their song. If it were humanity that needed changing, then we'd be out of luck. But it isn't humanity that needs changing, it's just...us.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“The people who are horrified by the idea of children learning what they want to learn when they want to learn it have not accepted the very elementary psychological fact that people (all people, of every age) remember the things that are important to them - the things they need to know - and forget the rest.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“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.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“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.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“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.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“The world doesn't belong to us, we belong to it. Always have, always will. We belong to the world. We belong to the community of life on this planet--it doesn't belong to us. We got confused about that, now it's time to set the record straight”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“From infancy onward, children are the most fantastic learners in the world.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will ACT like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“Don't try to drive the homeless into places we find suitable. Help them survive in places they find suitable.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“Blessed are those who do whatever they can wherever they are, for no one is devoid of resources or opportunities.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“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.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“A castaway in the sea was going down for the third time when he caught sight of a passing ship. Gathering his last strength, he waved frantically and called for help. Someone on board peered at him scornfully and shouted back, "Get a boat!”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“I have amazing news for you. Man is not alone on this planet. He is part of a community, upon which he depends absolutely.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“Diversity is a survival factor for the community itself. A community of a hundred million species can survive anything short of total global catastrophe. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature drop of twenty degrees—which would be a lot more devastating than it sounds. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature rise of twenty degrees. But a community of a hundred species or a thousand species has almost no survival value at all.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“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.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“[I]n Africa I was a member of a family—of a sort of family that the people of your culture haven't known for thousands of years. If gorillas were capable of such an expression, they would tell you that their family is like a hand, of which they are the fingers. They are fully aware of being a family but are very little aware of being individuals. Here in the zoo there were other gorillas—but there was no family. Five severed fingers do not make a hand.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you’ll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you’ll be tempted to say to the people around you, “how can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“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”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“Thinkers aren't limited by what they know, because they can always increase what they know. Rather they're limited by what puzzles them, because there's no way to become curious about something that doesn't puzzle you.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“What's normal is for things to work. What's not normal is for things to fail.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“If the world was made for us, then it BELONGS to us and we can do what we damn well please with it.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“I hope it will not be too long before the technologies that support our population explosion begin to be perceived as no less hazardous to the future of life on this planet than the endless production of radioactive wastes.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“The obvious can sometimes be illuminating when perceived in an unhabitual way.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“May the forests be with you and with your children.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“The world is not going to survive very much longer as humanity's captive.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“The theory I'm putting forward here is that storytelling is a genetic characteristic in the sense that early human hunters who were able to organize events into stories were more successful than hunters who weren't—and this success translated directly into reproductive success. In other words, hunters who were storytellers tended to be better represented in the gene pool than hunters who weren't, which (incidentally) accounts for the fact that storytelling isn't just found here and there among human cultures, it's found universally.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“Animists are not so much people with a religion as people with a fundamentally religious way of looking at things.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“Imagine that the gods have a care for everything that lives in the community of life on earth.”
-- Daniel Quinn -
“No story is devoid of meaning ... If you know how to look for it.”
-- Daniel Quinn