Daniel Quinn Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. ...it doesn’t make any difference. Whether we’re being lied to or not, we still have to get up and go to work and pay the bills and all the rest. Ishmael

2. 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

3. [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

4. [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. Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

5. [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

6. [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

7. [Y]our agricultural revolution is not an event like the Trojan War, isolated in the distant past and without relevance to your lives today. The work begun by those neolithic farmers in the Near East has been carried forward from one generation to the next without a single break, right into the present moment. It's the foundation of your vast civilization today in exactly the same way that it was the foundation of the very first farming village. Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

8. 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. Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

9. Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere in the universe that creation came to an end with the birth of man? Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere out there that man was the climax toward which creation had been straining from the beginning? ...Very far from it. The universe went on as before, the planet went on as before. Man's appearance caused no more stir than the appearance of jellyfish. Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

10. 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

11. 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.

12. 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

13. 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?

14. 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

15. The obvious can sometimes be illuminating when perceived in an unhabitual way. Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

16. 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

17. 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. Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

18. 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. If a thing falls outside the range of people's curiosity, then they simply cannot make inquiries about it. It constitutes a blind spot - a spot of blindness that you can't even know is there unit someone draws your attention to it. My Ishmael

19. This is considered almost holy work by farmers and ranchers. Kill off everything you can't eat. Kill off anything that eats what you eat. Kill off anything that doesn't feed what you eat.""It IS holy work, in Taker culture. The more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world, and that makes it just about the holiest work there is. Once you exempt yourself from the law of limited competition, everything in the world except your food and the food of your food becomes an enemy to be exterminated. Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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