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In the West we cling to the past like limpets. In Haiti the present is the axis of all life. As in Africa, past and future are but distant measures of the present, and memories are as meaningless as promises.

Wade Davis

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Wade Davis
Age: 70
Born: 1953
Born: December 14
Anthropologist
Ethnobotanist
Scientist
Omaha
Nebraska
Edmund Wade Davis
Present
Measures
Future
Distant
Past
Promises
Life
Meaningless
Like
Africa
Axis
West
Axes
Promise
Haiti
Memories
Cling

More quotes by Wade Davis

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The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.
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So be patient. Do not compromise. And give your destiny time to find you.
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Risk discomfort and solitude for understanding.
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Only, in Haiti, I realized, is it possible to drink rum and haggle with a god.
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The world can only appear monochromatic to those who persist in interpreting what they experience through the lens of a single cultural paradigm, their own. For those with the eyes to see and the heart to feel, it remains a rich and complex topography of the spirit.
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Mining in BC's Sacred Headwaters is like drilling for oil in the Sistine Chapel
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Change is no threat to culture.
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Language is an old-growth forest of the mind.
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On paper I would be a rather bold individual in our culture.
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A language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. ... Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind.
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You know, once something freezes, it's solid. That's the key to the arctic - they didn't fear the cold, they made use of it.
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What could be more lonely than to be enveloped in silence, to be the last of your people to speak your native tongue, to have no way to pass on the wisdom of the elders, to anticipate the promise of the children. This tragic fate is indeed the plight of someone somewhere roughly every two weeks.
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The measure of a society is not only what it does but the quality of its aspirations.
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Its haunting to realize that half of the languages of the world are teetering on the brink of extinction.
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To have that powder blown up your nose is rather like being shot out of a rifle barrel lined with Baroque paintings and landing on a sea of electricity.
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All cultures through all time have constantly been engaged in a dance with new possibilities for life. Change is the one constant in human history.
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If we accept that we are all cut from the same genetic cloth, all cultures share the same genius. And whether that genius is placed into technological wizardry which has been our great achievement, or, by contrast, placed into the unraveling of complex threads of memory inherent in a myth is simply a matter of choice.
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Genocide, the physical extinction of a people, is universally condemned, but ethnocide, the destruction of people's way of life, is not only not condemned, it's universally celebrated as part of a development strategy.
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The surface of the Earth itself is an immense loom upon which the sun weaves the fabric of existence.
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Heroes are never perfect, but they're brave, they're authentic, they're courageous, determined, discreet, and they've got grit.
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