Quote

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.

Daniel Quinn

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Daniel Quinn
Age: 82 †
Born: 1935
Born: October 11
Died: 2018
Died: February 17
Autobiographer
Novelist
Writer
Omaha
Nebraska
Daniel Clarence Quinn
World
Clumsy
Literal
Deliberate
Destroying
War
Way

More quotes by Daniel Quinn

Image
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.
Daniel Quinn
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Children don't need learning. They need access to what they want to learn outside the home.
Daniel Quinn
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
You shouldn't have to settle for rabbits if what you want is deer
Daniel Quinn
Image
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.
Daniel Quinn
Image
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.
Daniel Quinn
Image
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.
Daniel Quinn
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Daniel Quinn