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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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Daniel Quinn
Age: 82 †
Born: 1935
Born: October 11
Died: 2018
Died: February 17
Autobiographer
Novelist
Writer
Omaha
Nebraska
Daniel Clarence Quinn
World
Repair
Devastating
Attained
Mastery
Spite
Already
Stop
Devastation
Enough
Wrought

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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.
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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.
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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.
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You shouldn't have to settle for rabbits if what you want is deer
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Increasing food production to feed an increased population results in yet another increase in population.
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If we continue...to consume the world until there's no more to consume, then there's going to come a day, sure as hell, when our children or their children or their children's children are going to look back on us - on you and me - and say to themselves, My God, what kind of monsters were these people?
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Courage is the virtue of the free.
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I didn't want a guru or a kung fu master or a spiritual director. I didn't want to become a sorcerer or learn the zen of archery or meditate or align my chakras or uncover mast incarnations...I was after something else entirely, but it wasn't in the Yellow Pages or anywhere else that I could discover.
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Imagine that the gods have a care for everything that lives in the community of life on earth.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Our lifestyle is evolutionarily unstable--and is therefore in the process of eliminating itself in the perfectly ordinary way.
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From the animist point of view, humans belong in a sacred place because they themselves are sacred. Not sacred in a special way, not more sacred than anything else, but merely as sacred as anything else -- as sacred as bison or salmon or crows or crickets or bears or sunflowers.
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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.
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What's normal is for things to work. What's not normal is for things to fail.
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