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

Daniel Quinn

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Daniel Quinn
Age: 82 †
Born: 1935
Born: October 11
Died: 2018
Died: February 17
Autobiographer
Novelist
Writer
Omaha
Nebraska
Daniel Clarence Quinn
Illuminating
Perceived
Obvious
Sometimes
Way

More quotes by Daniel Quinn

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Everyone in your culture knows this. Man was born to turn the world into paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidty, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness.
Daniel Quinn
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There are times when having too much to say can be as dumbfounding as having too little.
Daniel Quinn
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What's normal is for things to work. What's not normal is for things to fail.
Daniel Quinn
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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
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We're straying from the path of salvation because we remember that we once belonged to the world and were content in that belonging.
Daniel Quinn
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Lies are like sleeping pills. You should only use them when you absolutely have to. They spoil everything if you make a habit of them.
Daniel Quinn
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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
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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
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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
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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
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In effect, you're saying that if you knew how you oughtt to live, then the flaw is man could be controlled. If you knew how you ought to live, you wouldn't be forever screwing up the world. perhaps in fact the two things are actually one thing. Perhaps the flaw in man is exactly this: that he doesn't know how he ought to live.
Daniel Quinn
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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
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Imagine that the gods have a care for everything that lives in the community of life on earth.
Daniel Quinn
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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
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All paths lie together in the hand of god like a web endlessly woven, and yours and mine are no greater or less than the beetle's or the squirrel's or the sparrow's. All are held together.
Daniel Quinn
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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