Daniel Quinn Quotes

• People will listen when they're ready to listen and not before. Don't waste time with people who want to argue. They'll keep you immobilized forever. Look for people who are already open to something new.

  Daniel Quinn

  Learning   Knowledge   People  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure”, p.189, Broadway Books

  467

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

  Daniel Quinn

  Rabbits   Want   Deer  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.224, Bantam

  2277

• 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

  Song   Humanity   Luck  

  3445

• 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.

  Daniel Quinn

  War   Law   Community  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.129, Bantam

  3221

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

  Daniel Quinn

  Normal   Failing  

  2752

• 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

  Sunset   Fire   Ideas  

  3805

• If Mother Culture were to give an account of human history using these terms, it would go something like this: ' The Leavers were chapter one of human history -- a long and uneventful chapter. Their chapter of human history ended about ten thousand years ago with the birth of agriculture in the Near East. This event marked the beginning of chapter two, the chapter of the Takers. It's true there are still Leavers living in the world, but these are anachronisms, fossils -- people living in the past, people who just don't realize that their chapter of human history is over. '

  Daniel Quinn

  Mother   Past   Two  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.42, Bantam

  3739

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

  Daniel Quinn

  Children   World   Fantastic  

  900

• We've poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit.. and we go on gobbling them up. It's hard to imagine how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but nobody's really doing anything about it. It's a problem our children will have to solve, or their children.

  Daniel Quinn

  Children   Responsibility   Greed  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.80, Bantam

  714

• 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.

  Daniel Quinn

  Race   Survival   Prison  

  851

• 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

  Expression   Law   World  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.145, Bantam

  5056

• Our schools are much like our prisons: they disappoint us because they only do what they're designed to do, and it annoys us that they don't do something else!

  Daniel Quinn

  Education   School   Prison  

  4269

• When you send off a short story, it sits on the editor's desk in the same pile with stories by the most famous and honored names in present-day writing-and it's not going to be accepted unless it's as good as theirs. (And it'll probably have to be better.)

  Daniel Quinn

  Writing   Editors   Names  

  3931

• five severed fingers do not make a hand

  Daniel Quinn

  Hands   Gorillas   Ishmael  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.12, Bantam

  4287

• 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

  Confused   Community   Records  

  330

• 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.

  Daniel Quinn

  Race   World   Prison  

  5101

• You've been in love with someone for a decade - someone who barely knows you're alive. You've done everything, tried everything to make this person see that you're a valuable, estimable person, and that your love is worth something. Then one day you open the paper and glance at the Personals column, and there you see that your loved one has placed an ad... seeking someone worthwhile to love and be loved by.

  Daniel Quinn

  Love   Dream   One Day  

  4068

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

  Daniel Quinn

  School   Kids   Needs  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “My Ishmael”, p.158, Bantam

  4195

• 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

  Men   Community   News  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.99, Bantam

  1354

• If the world is saved, it will not be by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all. Why not new minds with new programs? Because where you find people working on programs, you don't find new minds, you find old ones. Programs and old minds go together like buggy whips and buggies.

  Daniel Quinn

  People   Mind   Together  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure”, p.8, Broadway Books

  2991

• 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.

  Daniel Quinn

  Ocean   Men   Space  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.74, Bantam

  2288

• 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.

  Daniel Quinn

  People   World   Facts  

  2383

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

  Daniel Quinn

  Way   Sometimes   Obvious  

  2114

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

  Daniel Quinn

  Confused   Ishmael   Ifs  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.25, Bantam

  2660

• 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.

  Daniel Quinn

  Whales   Water Lily   Spiders  

  Daniel Quinn (2010). “The Story of B”, p.324, Bantam

  3992

• We are all captives of a story.

  Daniel Quinn

  Stories   Captives  

  5040

• [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

  Zoos   Expression   Hands  

  4343

• 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

  Needs   Prophet   Ought  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.86, Bantam

  4951

• Karl Marx recognized that workers without a choice are workers in chains. But his idea of breaking chains was for us to depose the pharaohs and then build the pyramids for ourselves, as if building pyramids is something we just can't stop doing, we love it so much.

  Daniel Quinn

  Ideas   Pyramids   Choices  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure”, p.52, Broadway Books

  1819

• 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.

  Daniel Quinn

  Mastery   World   Devastation  

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.80, Bantam

  4254

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