Quote

I'm sure civilizations will still evolve through play, or rather as play, since that seems to be a fundamental mechanism of our humanity.

Diane Ackerman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Diane Ackerman
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: October 7
Author
Naturalist
Non-Fiction Writer
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Waukegan
Illinois
Seems
Fundamental
Still
Fundamentals
Civilization
Play
Humanity
Since
Sure
Civilizations
Rather
Mechanism
Stills
Evolve

More quotes by Diane Ackerman

Image
In the early years of the Uprising, we survived on one meal a day of horse meat and soup, but by the end we ate only dried peas, dogs, cats and birds.
Diane Ackerman
Image
A kiss is like singing into someone's mouth.
Diane Ackerman
Image
An animal on a leash is not tamed by the owner. The owner is extending himself through the leash to that part of his personality which is pure dog, that part of him which just wants to eat, sleep, bark, hump chairs, wet the floor in joy, and drink out of a toilet bowl.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Symbolic of life, hair bolts from our head[s]. Like the earth, it can be harvested, but it will rise again. We can change its color and texture when the mood strikes us, but in time it will return to its original form, just as Nature will in time turn our precisely laid-out cities into a weed-way.
Diane Ackerman
Image
We have vexed and bothered every plant and every animal on every continent.
Diane Ackerman
Image
History is an agreed-upon fiction.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful.
Diane Ackerman
Image
As a species, we've somehow survived large and small ice ages, genetic bottlenecks, plagues, world wars and all manner of natural disasters, but I sometimes wonder if we'll survive our own ingenuity.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Part of the irony of environmentalism is questing for solutions when you know you're part of the problem.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Adult bats don't weigh much. They're mainly fur and appetite.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Life is a thing that mutates without warning, not always in enviable ways. All part of the improbable adventure of being alive, of being a brainy biped with giant dreams on a crazy blue planet.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Our relationship with nature has changed radically, irreversibly, but by no means all for the bad. Our new epoch is laced with invention. Our mistakes are legion, but our talent is immeasurable.
Diane Ackerman
Image
I'm certainly not opposed to digital technology, whose graces I daily enjoy and rely on in so many ways. But I worry about our virtual blinders.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Variety is the pledge that matter makes to living things.
Diane Ackerman
Image
We would lie on coral sand, below sugary stars, watching Cassiopeia mount her throne and the Great Bear wash its paws in the South. I would say, I have a secret to tell you. And, folding me in your arms, boyish and sly, you would answer: Whisper it into my mouth.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Smell is the mute sense, the one without words.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Home is where the heart is, we say, rubbing the flint of one abstraction against another.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Human beings are sloshing sacks of chemicals on the move.
Diane Ackerman
Image
If a mind is just a few pounds of blood, urea, and electricity, how does it manage to contemplate itself, worry about its soul, do time-and-motion studies, admire the shy hooves of a goat, know that it will die, enjoy all the grand and lesser mayhems of the heart ?
Diane Ackerman
Image
On some summer days in New York City, the air hangs thickly visible, like the combined exhalations of eight million souls. Steam rising from vents underground makes you wonder if there isn't one giant sweat gland lodged beneath the city.
Diane Ackerman